Digging Deep and Getting Dirty

Yael Ronen was born in Jerusalem in 1976. Ronen’s play Third Generation, featuring German, Israeli and Palestinian actors, was invited to numerous festivals. Her production Hakoah Wien, developed at Schauspielhaus Graz, was awarded the Austrian Nestroy theatre prize in 2013. She staged the world premiere of the adaptation of Olga Grjasnowa’s bestselling novel All Russians Love Birch Trees. Common Ground emerged as a meditation from Ronen and her actors on the aftermath of the war in former Yugoslavia; in 2015 the play was invited to the renowned Theatertreffen Festival at Berlin and won the audience award at Mülheimer Theatertage. Her latest productions at Gorki are Erotic Crisis and Dad Kohlhass-Prinzip as well as The Situation, which was invited to the Theatertreffen 2016. The piece was elected as piece of the year (Stück des Jahres) 2016. The Situation, which she developed together with the six-actor ensemble, negotiates the political situation in the Middle East and was selected by the critics in the annual survey from the Theater heute journal as the play of the year in 2016. The Gorki opened its 2016/2017 season with her piece Denial, a project about personal and political repression. In addition, Ronen was awarded the Austrian Nestroy Prize for Lost and Found in the category Best Play – Author's Prize. In 2017 she received a prize from the German centre of the International Theatre Institute within the framework of World Theatre Day, and directed the world premiere of Winterreise, with the newly founded Exil Ensemble at the Gorki. In the same year, she has also been awarded with the 14. Europe Prize for Theatrical Realities. During the season 2017/2018 she staged Roma Armee and A Walk On The Dark Side at Gorki, during the season 2018/2019 she staged Yes But No as well as Third Generation-Next Generation at Gorki. Since the 2019/2020 season she has been a member of the newly founded Artistic Advisory Board of the Gorki Theatre, which advises Artistic Director Shermin Langhoff on the artistic direction. Her production Slippery Slope — Almost A Musical was invited to the 2022 Theatertreffen. She also dealt with conspiracy theories in 2022 in Operation Mindfuck — Based On A True Story, But Not Really. In the season 22/23 she is directing Blood Moon Blues.

Collecting five plays by the German Israeli playwright Yael Ronen—including Third Generation, A Walk on the Dark Side, Roma Army, Slippery Slope, and Planet B—Digging Deep and Getting Dirty is an essential introduction for English-speaking readers to the work of one of the most renowned theater-makers in Europe. Ronen’s collaborative and caring methodologies and rigorous, mordantly funny, and eclectic aesthetics have shaped and transformed German-speaking theater over the past decade.