The performance of Tel Aviv's Key Theater - "When all was green" is cleverly designed and - with attention to every detail - a meticulously executed theatrical play. It tells a story about nature and how man greedily stretches it, about green areas that are lost before the bestiality of concrete and human thoughtlessness, but also about one green bud of hope. After a show like this, the viewer can't help but ask himself, has it ever been completely green and will man ever become so conscientious that one day the color green prevails around us again?
We talked to Dikla Katz and Avi Zilha.
The play is inspired by Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. In our busy world today, what could that good tree be?
I think the tree and nature are a good metaphor in our lives. It is about existence, common coexistence, relationships of taking and giving, it is important to emphasize - not only taking. If we look at a tree, we have to appreciate what it gives us and respect it, and if we don't understand the importance of its survival, then we don't understand and don't respect the structure of the world.
Beauty is in small details, you really paid attention to them. It takes so much for a person to so gently and delicately move those little creatures that tell us this wise story through those dexterous fingers. Do today's kids, who are quite impatient, also see those details?
I think they see them, we try to make them pay attention to those details. We help them through our expression. The whole story could have been without details, sound, some movements, but thanks to those, the children see that it is not just a tree playing a tree but that the tree has a story to tell. Even if they don't connect everything at the beginning, if they don't fully understand, the story opens up for them in an hour, a day, a week.
Are you optimistic that someday in the future everything will be green again?
That is life's biggest question. The whole world will not become green, but we, humans have the power to make at least some small parts of this world greener, to think about our environment, parents, friends, other people, other countries, to be more sensitive and to realize that we are not the only ones in this world. Maybe the world won't go completely green again, but maybe it can get greener, step by step, if we're sensitive enough.