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Israel’s Odd Birdz Land in NYC

[additional-authors]
August 25, 2015

After nearly a decade of sold-out performances around the world, and a successful tour in the U.S last summer, award-winning Israeli-based theater troupe Tziporela returned to the States with its critically-acclaimed performance style with a brand new comedic, theatrical and musical production, “Odd Birdz.”

Tziporela was hand-selected by a renowned startup program in Israel for their inventive and “innovative approach to theater, which has changed the Israeli theater scene”, and through venture capitalists, secured all funding necessary to bring their hilarious show, Odd Birdz, to New York City. The show is comprised of 20 short sketches about daily occurrences, sometimes quite ordinary situations, but the great writing, acting, dancing, and comedic timing gives the audience something different, unexpected, and refreshing. The run in the fall was called, “Clever, funny, and ultra-charismatic,” by the New York Times and the Huffington Post called the cast, “A fiercely talented crew!”

The creators, who also happen to be the actors, directors, and choreographers behind this unique show, craft an evening of hilarious fun and imaginative entertainment that transcends all boundaries – language, culture, and humor. They say humor is cultural; it fits to the area from which you come. In Tziporela’s case, like other great comedians, the humor is universal. The nine members of the ensemble inventively weave together movement, music, physical theatre, and outrageous comedy.

In an Interview to Israelife, cast members Omri, Lotus, Danny and Gal remember how it all began, tell all about the decision to translate Tziporela’s Israeli humor to English, and share their thoughts about the meteoric success of their fellow cast member – Dana Ivgy, who is now one of Israel’s biggest movie stars.

So…How did it all begin?

Omri: We studied together as a class in Nisan Nativ Acting Studio in Israel, and already as a class we made special projects that we weren't asked to do, just because we had a need to create, so it seemed only natural that after we graduate we would form such a group that gave us basically the freedom to create what we wanted. The only thing that was missing was a name so we came up with Tziporela, which was an inside joke of ours and kind of means a little bird in Hebrew.

What makes this troupe so special, in your opinion?

Omri:  In my opinion the thing that makes it special is that you have a large variety of genres in one show and the energy and extra factors that comes from the group. As an audience, you might like one sketch better than the other, but the added value you receive throughout the entire show is that “I want to be part of that group” kind of feeling. You've got to come and see it in order to feel it. Words fail to describe. That's why we act the show out usually instead of reading it to people… we tried it , it didn't work.

There’s something about Tziporela that's both mainstream and very far from the main stream. Were you surprised to witness its huge success in Israel?

Omri: I don't believe we thought of it so much in terms as mainstream or not, the only thing that guided us was to do whatever made us laugh, what would we want to see in a show and basically just letting each one of us express how seriously stupid he or she could be.
In the beginning there may have been  a “far from main stream” feeling to it maybe because of the way we work and the fact that most audience came through recommendations from friends that have seen the show… Naturally I believe when something is good more people come to see it and after a while enough people have seen it (sometimes more than 50 times) and make that very same thing mainstream.

As creators we try to cross streams as often as we can… never stay on one stream. It's dangerous. We have that as a bumper sticker.

What made you guys decide to perform in the US? How did you make this tour happen?

Omri:  Well, we are also influenced from American comedy like the rest of the world and also we think of our comedy as human situations gone askew… terribly askew…  So I guess without knowing it, we always aimed our comedy on people , wherever they may be and we couldn't ignore the fact that there were people in the US.

We checked in google. New York is the capital of theater so it was always in the back of our minds to arrive here at some point and see if we can connect to the people. And gladly enough – people connected. And as for how we made this tour happen  – it took some suitcases… but actually we invested money in it together with two other investors that believed in us, got a team of marketing and PR and logistics here at NY and throughout the year worked hard and put together an international show made up of translated sketches that we had and new material and  in the end we took a plane.

We all fit in the plane. There was talk about taking two planes, but then we voted on it ( like we always do) and decided that one would be enough. One plane.

Do you remember any hateful/ loving comments from the audience?

Danny: We get a lot of heart-warming comments after our shows but there is one reaction to our show which was special to me. We had a couple come into one of our shows and I met them as they were being seated. It seemed as if they just had a fight and had a very tense energy between them. The guy was texting and ignoring his girlfriend, and the girl was frustrated and was about to break into tears.

The house lights turned off and we started our show.  When we finished and came out to take a bow, that sad frustrated woman was the first to give us a standing ovation followed by the crowd. And when we saw her coming out of the theater she came up to us, briefly shared with us her gratitude and took off smiling. Her boyfriend (Whom I caught laughing during the show) came out looking confused, and started running after her.

Where do you see yourselves in five years?

Gal: Tziporela vision is to create a new stream in theater like Cirque du Soleil made in circus. Our main goal is to get recognize an an international theater group and build our theater in Israel. In 5 years we plan to be half way which means touring the world and get recognition in Europe and  the far east.

Has Dana Ivgi's success, being considered often as the person who had the greatest year here in Israel, changed her?

Gal: What makes Dana such a unique person and actor is that she always remains an ultimate partner and a faithful friend. These two things let her developed all the time and we're happy for her and inspired by her development. We all know that the first rule in success is to be modest and Dana is a modest artist.

Tziporela’s Odd Birdz
The Players Theater | 115 Macdougal, New York, NY 10012
Tickets range from $45-$75 for and may be purchased here:

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