Election Section

“We’re cooking live on-stage, every performance,” said director Clive Chafer of TheatreFIRST’s Northern California premiere of The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, opening tonight (Friday) at the Jewish Community Center. 

The play, on a tour of three small Bay Area stages, features eight actors playing 40 characters, handling 125 props, 45 of which are edible. 

“It’s one of our postage stamp epics,” Chafer said, “showing food to be what transcends all divisions of religion, culture, ethnicity and nationality in Israel and the occupied territories.”  

The play began in London a few years ago when writer Robin Soanes was commissioned by the non-profit Caird Co. to construct a play about everyday life in Israel/Palestine in the style that’s become known as “verbatim theater.” After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Soans traveled to the area with two stage directors—one Jewish, the other Arab—returning with over 100 interviews.  

“He interviewed everybody, from transvestite prostitutes in the street, to falafel shop owners whose buildings had been blown up, to transplants from New York City to Jerusalem, getting all of them to talk about food while cooking or eating,” Chafer said, “It’s a patchwork of stories in 25 scenes, some characters recurring—part cooking demo, part docu-drama, part report from the front lines.” 

Chafer said some characters have direct experience with suicide bombings, but others have a more indirect relationship to the violence. 

“One transplant starts eating at a chain of fast food stands that suffered bombings, saying if customers don’t come, the bombers will win,” he said. “It’s about what it’s like to live in an undeclared war zone.” 

Soans’ first rule of playwrighting is: don’t try to make it a political play. The details of everyday life are what reveal the truth of the situation. 

“Israel and the occupied territories are a melting pot, not so different from the U.S.A.,” Chafer said. “There’s great diversity; one character’s a Greek Orthodox Arab married to a priest at the Church of the Nativity. All have common ground in the passion for, and delight in, the food of the Eastern Mediterranean, which all eat, but each prepares differently.”  

TheatreFIRST seeks to bring plays dealing with important international issues to Bay Area audiences. Chafer said the company had developed a series of plays about identity—racial, ethnic, religious—and conflict.” 

The company has recently produced a play about Indian immigrants to America, one about a Latino who lives in North American traveling in Latin America and David Hare’s Via Dolorosa, about his trip to Israel/Palestine where he met with various newsmakers. 

The Arab-Israeli Cookbook can be seen as a sister play of sorts to that work, Chafer said, “but one that draws out strands in common from everyday life that will become threads in the fabric of peace.” 

The Arab-Israeli Cookbook will follow the same path of Via Dolorosa, from the Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center, then to Old Oakland Theater on Ninth Street near Broadway, and finally to the Traveling Jewish Theater in San Francisco. 

Chafer said he was excited about the new Oakland venue. “In our swank new location, in a beautiful row of Victorians in Old Oakland, we couldn’t be better placed. There are at least seven restaurants and two places to have a drink right by the theater. And there’s free parking in a lot a block away.” 

TheatreFIRST presents The Arab-Israeli Cookbook Oct. 27-Nov. 6 at the Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley; Nov. 10-20 at Old Oakland Theatre, 461 Ninth St., Oakland; and Dec. 1-4 at the Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida St., San Francisco. 

Show times: 8 p.m. Thursday–Saturday; 3 p.m. Sundays. There will be no Friday performances at the BRJCC (Oct. 28 and Nov. 4), and BRJCC’s Nov. 6 show will be held at 7 p.m. rather than 3. Tickets: $1-$22. Half-price for those under 25 years of age. $3 discount for seniors, students and members. Pay what you can on Nov. 3. For more information, call 436-5085, or see theatrefirst.com.