Nola Chilton
Israeli theatre director (1922–2021)
Nola Chilton (12 February 1922 – 8 October 2021) was an American-born Israeli theater director and acting teacher. She was a pioneer of socially engaged theater in Israel. In 2013, Chilton was awarded the Israel Prize for theater. [1]
Biography
Nola Chilton was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish immigrants from Odessa. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was twelve. Her father was a jewelry engraver and food peddler. She studied acting under Lee Strasberg and worked at the Actors Studio , coaching actors and directing. In 1960, she directed an off-off Broadway production of "Dead End," a radical play about the miserable lives of poverty-stricken young people, in which Dustin Hoffman appeared. [2]
In 1963, Chilton immigrated to Israel, settling in Kiryat Gat , then a small town in the northern Negev . She worked briefly for the Cameri Theater but was not enamored with the Tel Aviv scene, which reminded her of what she had left behind. She adopted a two-year-old girl and moved to the north of the country, first to Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael and then Kibbutz Yasur . She was married to author John Auerbach, who died in 2002. Chilton was latterly a resident of Kibbutz Sdot Yam . [2] She died on 8 October 2021, at the age of 99. [3]
Legacy and influence
Chilton was the inspiration for The Open Theater , an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973 in New York City founded by her students to implement her "post-method," post-absurd acting technique through a collaborative process that explores political, artistic, and social issues. [4]
References
- ↑ Staging the Other Israel: The Documentary Theatre of Nola Chilton
- 1 2 One woman show at 91: Nola Chilton is not here to appease the audience , Haaretz
- ↑ חודשים לפני יום הולדתה ה-100: הבמאית וכלת פרס ישראל נולה צ'לטון הלכה לעולמה (in Hebrew)
-
↑
Blumenthal, Eileen (1984).
Joseph Chaikin: Exploring at the Boundaries of Theater
(1. publ.
ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
0521285895
.
the open theater.
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