I have a collection at home of broken chairs. I pick them up from the street. The shapes of the legs remind me of human and animal bodies. When I decided to work on Hannah Yakin's childhood memories I immediately knew I'd use the legs to build with them my puppets as I had done some years ago for the Youth Wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.They had commissioned an interactive puppet corner for their exhibition on Heroes. I was also asked to create a play for the general public, and I wrote, made the puppets and performed "Theseus and the Minotaur" . Below are some of the puppets I built for the exhibition. Left: soldier. Center: horses. Right: horse.
The fact that I gave the broken chairs a new life in the theater after being thrown to the garbage suited a show about survival. Wood, the connection between chairs and ideas of home -a place to rest-be-stay-came to my mind.
Rafi Grafman was my partner back then, he was a Judaica expert and excellent goldsmith . He worked for major museums and private collectors repairing, identifying and cataloging specimens and collections. I was immersed in the world of Judaica through Rafi until his sudden and tragic death in 2001. This is how Torah ornaments made their way into the design of the show, as a homage to Rafi.
The chair legs reminded me not only of people but of the wooden rods of the Torah scrolls.
Below left: Torah scrolls in silver case.Center: Torah case.Right: the School case in my show.Notice the ''rimonim" or silver decorations at the top of the rods.The photo in the row below shows these decorations in silver, very often including bells.
Soon both ideas came together: out of the chair legs I built the puppets which appear at first to be the visible part of the wooden rods.The puppets they are wrapped in the scenery cloth as a scroll. Once the cloth is spread out the puppets become visible.
Below is a photo of the low platform on which I perform.The picture to the right below is a close up of the scrolls, each for a different scene.
Other Judaica objects appear, for example the hand with which the protagonist reads the home behavior rules written on the cloth that serves as the scenery for the family house scene.
The black cloth which represents the blackboard for the school scene is taken out of the Torah case in a gesture reminiscent of the lifting up of the Torah prior to prayer.
The show opens with a view of the village where Anita was born and an angel comes flying in. This angel was inspired by the Angel of History that Walter Benjamin wrote about after seeing a picture by Paul Klee. I built a puppet copying Paul Klee's painting but then asked a friend of mine Jurg Beier to sculpt an angel for my show.
Below left: my puppet.Right: Paul Klee's Angelus Novus-today at the Israel Museum of Jerusalem.
In the meantime Jery Garval was writing the music for the scene, a storm which catches the angel and who can only come down to earth with my help.This was my original idea: to bring the angel down from the sky and ask him to see what is going on from a short distance...from above one misses important details. All the houses look the same...can the angel see that in some live Jews that are obliged to sew a yellow star onto their clothes?
The angel comes down and picks up Anita's house and rocks it to the music of a lullaby...saying by this gesture 'you will be safe...I will take care of you'. Interestingly half of the children and adults in the audience think it is the angel of death. I discuss this at the end of the show and the Angel of Death that spares the Jews in Egypt before the exodus.
Below left: first scene with the houses in the village of Amstelveen and a chair with the scrolls at the back. The shiny silvery case contains the school scroll. Center: the Passover angel. Right: Angel sculptures by Jurg Beier.
Below to the left is the photo of a house in Amstelveen in 1940 and to the right a photo of Hannah/Anita's house where one stills sees the entrance to the secret hideout as a grey patch in the wall.
Anita is seven years old and does not understand wht is meant by being Jewish. When she asks herself how does God decide who is going to be born Jewish she makes a gesture with her hands which is taken from the painting of the Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo.
Anita does not know what it means to be Jewish but she soon understands that it is ' a secret and dangerous". When she says dangerous she lifts up her arms , a reference to the famous photograph of the little boy in the Warsaw ghetto.
During many different periods throughout history Jews had to wear an item of clothing to make them recognizable as Jews. Often it was yellow. A yellow ring as we see below or a yellow star with the word Jew during WWII
In the show my hand painted yellow or a yellow cube becomes the star
About the family.
jan van hulst was so tall that he was nicknamed the giraffe in the family. Today on the roof of tiny store in one of the small Jerusalem parks thre is the sculpture of a giraffe made by Hanna's husband , Abraham Yakin in honor of his father in law.
Below we see Paula Horowitz van Hulst, Jan van Hulst and their three daughters, Miriam, Hannah/Anita and Alexandra.To the right we see tall Jan and his wife Paula.
Jan van Hulst never wanted during his life time to receive any medal fromYad vashem.His story of courage in risking his life for others is recognized in Yad Vashem today and appears in the Enccyclopedia Righteous of the Nations.
In 2007 I was invited to perform the show in an international festival in meppel, Holland.Miriam and Alexandra came to see the show after which they sat with the puppets for some photos. These are seen below and they caught their excitement!.
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