In 2007 I was invited to direct two new plays from Israel with a group of undergraduate students at Ohio Northern University. The university commissioned two new plays – one written buy an Arab playwright, and the other by an Israeli one.

     Oded Liphshitz is one of Israel's new and promising playwrights. It is hard to define his unique style of writing. It's somewhere around the magic realism and absurd landscapes, at once very personal and very poetic.

In Sonya and Bobek we meet Lilian, an aging woman who needs to cope with the unexpected return of her past husband. He returns to ask for her forgiveness and to get a new chance after he deserted her in solitary and childlessness. Alongside their story, we see Sonya, a young woman who raises her child by herself and prevents her husband from entering the apartment. The borders between the two worlds blur more and more as Lilian's mental struggle with her past and her husband increases.

Ohio Northern University, The Freed Center for The Performing Arts, 2007