When Nir Paldi did his military service in the Israel Defence Forces, he was not your average soldier. The young Israeli spent his three years in uniform teaching theatre in underprivileged communities and putting on musicals such as “Hair”. This type of contrast is exactly what characterises his latest theatrical endeavour, “Ballad of the Burning Star”, which broaches topics like the Holocaust and the Intifadas through the medium of cross-dressing and cabaret.
The “Theatre Ad Infinitum” is a multi-award winning theatre company, led by Nir Paldi, George Mann and Amy Nostbakken. It first rocketed to fame in 2008 at the Edinburgh Festival with its show ‘Behind the Mirror’ about the bizarre love affair between a woman, a man and the man’s reflection in the mirror. All of the company’s 80-minute productions are innovative in both style and content, but “Ballad of the Burning Star” seems to be the most ambitious venture yet.
When I ask Nir to give a short description of the show, he replies: ‘It is complicated to explain, but it’s really not very complicated as a piece of art, it’s very accessible.’ He describes it as a ‘story of an Israeli boy who goes through a lot of typical Israeli experiences – the whole background of the Holocaust, losing members of his family to terror attacks. During his involvement in the military he commits a crime and changes from a victim to an executioner in a very typical manner.’
Nir says that the story is semi-autobiographical. Born in Jerusalem – Israel’s historical and religious capital – Nir spent his childhood living in the disputed Palestinian territories, before moving to Tel Aviv as a teenager, and then to Paris. His experience in Paris was ‘very important for the creation of the piece’: ‘when you grow up in Israel as a Jew, you’re very mainstream and you don’t necessarily feel Jewish. But when I moved abroad I was suddenly ‘the Jewish guy’. It added to my feeling of confusion about who I was in terms of my national identity.’
As the Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the highly divisive issues of our time, any form of entertainment that deals with it is instantly controversial. But Nir explains that he tries to avoid the political debate by focusing ‘on the human story, a very complex human story’.
One of Nir’s main goals with the show – and perhaps the most complicated – is ‘to relate both sides’. He seems to have achieved this: he recounts how ‘after one show I got two people approaching me. One said – ‘this is so pro-Palestinian, you’re completely one-sided’ and the other said – ‘this is pro-Israeli, you’re completely one-sided’. With this kind of show it is very difficult to say. With the reality, too, it is very difficult to say.’
In discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict Nir conveys both resignation about its deeply complicated nature and hope of being able to soften people’s normally one-sided view of it. ‘People have so little hope and are so cynical about everything. Believing that there might be peace one day is radical. They look at you as if to say ‘Grow the fuck up’. But I think the show is hopeful in that it fosters dialogue. It makes people talk, so even if they disagree with the piece or they feel angry about it, it causes there to be dialogue. That was my intention – to create a discussion, build bridges between people and make them see that the other side is not just the ‘enemy’, but also a person, a human being.”
When I ask him why he decided to present a narrative – which he himself describes as having some very ‘hard-core themes’ – in such a seemingly light-hearted way, he gives a whole host of different reasons. Nir (who both conceived the idea of the show and plays the drag queen protagonist) explains that he chose to present it in this way in order to simultaneously generate a sense of distance and directness.
‘One of the main reasons that I decided to present the show through cabaret and drag was to create a bit of distance. The reality in Israel and Palestine is violent and aggressive. So although the story is very human and very emotive, I thought that the nature of the piece’s subject matter required some kind of distancing between the performers and the audience.’
‘Being a man in drag gives you the freedom to say whatever it is you want to say, to be very direct and rude and flamboyant. I chose cabaret because of its ability to involve the audience – to bring them into the story and then in some way betray them and play with them.’
Will his next show be in the same vein as “The Ballad of the Burning Star”? Nir assures me that the next show by “Theatre ad Infinitum” will certainly be ‘very very different’: it will deal with the Edward Snowden revelations, and will be ready for the Edinburgh Festival.
But he states that he, as an artist, outside of the company, ‘will always deal with this topic’. ‘Israel is a part of me, emotionally and intellectually. Some people take a very strong one-sided approach, but I feel like I can’t. I can’t escape the complexity. And that’s very painful.’
