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Pnina Gary

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Israeli actress and theatre director (1927–2023)

Pnina Gary
פנינה גרי
Gary in 2011
BornPnina Dromi
(1927-09-24)September 24, 1927
Nahalal, Mandatory Palestine
DiedAugust 2, 2023(2023-08-02) (aged 95)
Tel Aviv, Israel
Resting placeNahalal Cemetery [he]
Occupations
  • Actress
  • theatre director
Spouse Robert Gary ​ ​(m. 1949; died 1987)​
Children2, including Meirav Gary
RelativesMichael Cohen (grandson)

Pnina Gary (Hebrew: פנינה גרי; née Dromi; September 24, 1927 – August 2, 2023) was an Israeli actress and theatre director.

Biography

Pnina Dromi was born and raised in Nahalal, Mandatory Palestine, the daughter of Yosef Dromi (previously Kotlar) and Tzipora Ostrowski. Her parents made aliyah from Ukraine in 1919. Gary attended to Nahalal Agricultural High School (WIZO Nahalal Youth Village [he]), and later the teachers' seminar to become a kindergarten teacher.

In March 1948, during Israel's war for independence, just a few days before she was supposed to marry Eli, the son of Rachel Yanait and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (later to be the second president of Israel), her Palmach member husband-to-be was killed in an Arab ambush [he] in the fields of their kibbutz, Beit Keshet.

In September 1948, trying to recover from the outcome of the Beit Keshet battle, she volunteered to participate in an expedition of teachers to the DP camps around Munich. She was sent to help set up kindergartens in the camps and work with Jewish children who survived the Holocaust. Six months later, she was sent to reside in Ulm, in order to do the same work in the DP camps around Stuttgart.

In Munich, she met her husband, Robert Gary [he], a Jewish American journalist, who reported from the camps. They married in Germany in late 1949 and two weeks later moved to Israel. The couple had two daughters, Dorit and Meirav [he]. Through Meirav, she is the grandmother of rapper Michael Cohen.

Gary wrote a weekly column for Davar, an Israeli newspaper, for two years.

Pnina Gary died in Tel Aviv on August 2, 2023, at the age of 95.

Artistic career

Pnina Gary in New York, 1953

From 1953 through 1957, Pnina Gary studied acting in New York, in the private schools of Herbert Berghof and Lee Strasberg, and took lessons in the Actors Studio. After their return to Israel, in 1959, she co-founded the Zavit Theater, which was active for nine years and among others produced Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit", featuring Gary herself. During those years, she also acted in various theater shows produced by other theaters in Tel Aviv.

In 1968, Gary joined HaBima as an actress, until 1980. From 1981 through 1990 she was the artistic director of the Orna Porat Theater. She adapted a number of novels to theater, by the most renowned Israeli novelists: Amos Oz, Sami Michael, Shulamit Lapid, Tzruya Shalev and Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

Pnina Gary's film appearances as an actress include: The Dock (1960), Dreams (1969), Death Has No Friends (1970), Ariana (1971) and the BBC's A Dinner of Herbs (1988).

In 2006, she received an award for her life's work from both the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Education and ASSITEJ.

In 2008, Gary wrote and directed the one-woman show An Israeli Love Story, based on her own true life story between 1942, when she first met Eli Ben-Zvi, and 1948, with the tragic ending of their relationship. The play is still performed by Adi Bielski, who won the Israeli Best Actress Award in Fringe Theater in 2009.

On March 28, 2011, a special evening marked the celebrating of 250 shows. Attending that evening, were the Israeli Minister of Culture, Mrs. Limor Livnat, and the recent winner of the Israeli Sapir Prize for Literature 2011, the writer Yoram Kaniuk.

The play was translated to English and performed at The Leeds Jewish International Performing Arts Festival in 2009, at London's New End Theatre from May 18 to June 6, 2010, and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa as well as Montreal, Toronto and Washington, D.C., in September 2011. The show was also performed in the Harold Green Jewish Theatre in Toronto in 2014.

In 2011, Gary directed "Tmol Shilshom" (Only Yesterday), the novel by Shmuel Yosef Agnon which she adapted to theatre, and in 2012 Gary staged "My Name is Yuda", a poetry theater show based on the poems of Yehuda Amichai, which also featured Adi Bielski.

In 2013, Gary directed in Paris the French production of "An Israeli Love Story" (in French) under the name Une histoire d'amour israélienne, played by French actress Estelle Grynszpan.

In 2015, Gary published an autobiographical novel in Hebrew under the same title as the Hebrew title of the monodrama "An Israeli Love Story". The book was published under Schocken Books.

In 2016, the Hebrew language film, Sipur Ahava Eretz-Israeli (An Israeli Love Story) was released, directed by Dan Wolman and starring Adi Bielski based on Gary's life's story and the monodrama by the same name.

References

Pnina Gary as Estelle Rigault in "No Exit", Tel-Aviv 1958
  1. Pnina Gary’s filmography (in Hebrew)
  2. Yocheved Miriam Russo, Love in troubled times, The Jerusalem Post, April 2, 2010
  3. אשת התיאטרון פנינה גרי הלכה לעולמה בגיל 95 (in Hebrew)
  4. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, 1984, p. 322.
  5. "The Dock" Archived August 7, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, cine-holocaust.de. Accessed December 4, 2022.
  6. Dreams at IMDb
  7. Death Has No Friends at IMDb
  8. Ariana at IMDb
  9. A Dinner of Herbs at IMDb
  10. A Dinner of Herbs, ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift. Accessed December 4, 2022.
  11. An Israeli Love Story Archived June 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, HaniTheater.com. Accessed December 4, 2022.
  12. An Israeli Love Story, offwestendtheatres.co.uk. Accessed December 4, 2022.
  13. Jennifer Mcintosh, An Israeli Love Story in Ottawa, yourottawaregion.com. August 24, 2011.
  14. Sabine Gibbins, An Israeli Love Story Coming to Ottawa Sept. 7-8 Archived April 2, 2012, at the Wayback Machine September 1, 2011, Ottawa South EMC.
  15. Patrick Langston, A bounty of plays this month Archived October 1, 2013, at the Wayback Machine September 4, 2011, The Ottawa Citizen.
  16. Israeli play comes to Montreal Archived September 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Sep 6, 2011, The Jewish Tribune
  17. An Israeli Love Story – September 15 Archived April 2, 2012, at the Wayback Machine August 29, 2011, ShalomCanada.com
  18. An Israeli Love Story – about love and Israel Archived March 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine by Lisa Traiger, September 7, 2011, Washington Jewish Week.
  19. Laura Cutler, About Love and Israel – An Israeli Love Story, September 9, 2011, American University website.
  20. One woman production depicts epic 'love story' Archived November 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  21. An Israeli Love Story Archived February 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine at Toronto Centre for the Arts website.
  22. "My Name is Yuda": The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai at Tzavta, midnighteast.com. Accessed December 4, 2022.
  23. "Une histoire d'amour israélienne", at "Théâtre Darius Milhaud" website.
  24. Sipur Ahava Eretz-Israeli at IMDb

External links

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