Acco Festival: Between Celebration and Confrontation

This research follows the history of Akko Festival for Other Israeli Theatre in the years 1980-2012 as a site of a celebration as well as a confrontation. Thus Akko Festival is a borderland bringing together established directors and producers from the center of the field with young and alternative artists outside of it, as well as bringing together the center’s cultural hegemony and Akko’s residents – periphery lower-class Jews and Arabs. The research is based on approach of five aspects and their tight links and interrelations to investigate the festival: 1) artistic direction; 2) performance repertoire; 3) organization, budget and infrastructure; 4) reception; 5) host community.