Image-based conversation with

Amir Yatziv, Neta Spiegelman, Maya Arad Yasur, and Dr. Ohad Landesman.

Moderator: Vardit Gross

Behind the Scenes of Grass Widow: a play for three digital characters and an actress, a video performance by artist Amir Yatziv created for Artport’s Artist Film Festival, is based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s eponymous play, combining theater, cinema, reality TV, and computer games. Yatziv, actress Neta Spiegelman, who co-created the work, playwright and dramaturge Maya Arad Yasur, and documentary film scholar Dr. Ohad Landesman, will discuss the significance of the link between different media in the current digital age, and how it dramatically changes the affinities between reality and its representations.

Maya Arad Yasur is a playwright, production dramaturge, and scholar of the theater. Her plays have been translated to many languages; they have been produced in leading theaters in Israel and around the world, participated in international festivals, and published as books. Arad Yasur is winner of the Berliner Theatertreffen Stückemarkt prestigious prize for the play Amsterdam; first prize at the international playwriting competition of ITI-UNESCO for Suspended; and winner of Habima Prize for Emerging Playwrights for God Waits at the Station, for which she was nominated for the Israeli Theatre Award. In addition to playwriting, she is writing her doctoral dissertation on performance narratology. She also works as a dramaturge and artistic advisor in various productions, and sits on several artistic committees.

Dr. Ohad Landesman, is a film scholar and lecturer specializing in documentary cinema, cinema in the digital age, and animation. He is a member of the senior faculty of the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. His doctoral dissertation, which he completed at the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU, focused on the aesthetic implications of digital technology on contemporary documentary cinema, focusing on doc-fiction hybrids, essay films, and animated documentaries.