“Every show costume” declared the enticing ad that came my way. “The Beer Sheva Theater is celebrating its 50th anniversary and is offering the sale of costumes and accessories from the theater’s performances. Over the years, thousands of spectacular and expensive costumes have been accumulated from the theater’s productions, and now part of the loot is being offered for sale at a festive event!”
The happening on Friday morning promises an elegant escape from cooking for Shabbat plus a chance for a costume especially worthy of Purim – and here I am in the theater in Beer Sheva, on a particularly spring morning, trying to figure out who is responsible for this successful idea, and where exactly I can find the dress from Romeo and Juliet.
In the entrance hall are scattered the different clothes hangers, sorted by price. There are dozens of costumes and accessories here, some cost ten shekels, some 500. The doors have just opened but the place is already crowded. People walk around, measure, laugh and get excited. As a backup actress, I brought my little sister with me, a theater actress herself, to receive explanations in the professional field. Very quickly we meet Gili Kochvi, the theater’s costume and props designer for a decade, who is responsible for the costume department and who will turn out to be the mother of this entire sale.
Gili Kochvi, the costume designer: “Sometimes I work very hard on something but in the end they decide it won’t go on stage, and then it really sucks”
“This is the cloak from King Lear, and put it here,” she admires the people around her. The woman for whom every day is Purim has a blonde ponytail, boyish enthusiasm and a great love for her costumes and the theater. She agrees to take a picture (“on the condition that you see me ten kilos less”) and even spares a few minutes in all the commotion to talk to us about the event.
Do you recognize all the outfits here?
“Obviously!” she laughs “They’re like my children, there’s no way I’ll get confused. The only ones I don’t know are the ones that were here before my period. I don’t know how to associate them with a specific show, I can only guess.”
How do you get to a special profession like yours?
“The truth is that it comes from home. At Kibbutz Dorot, my mother was always responsible for all the sets of the cultural hall in plays and bar mitzvahs, and I always loved watching her do it. In general, I was always drawn to art and just when I started studying theater, the stage design department opened at the kibbutz seminar.”
Are there any outfits that are particularly difficult to create?
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame required a lot of technical work, and so did the costumes in the Merry Cage.”
Kochvi is related to the outfits sold here, you can’t miss it. “It’s worth much more than what you pay,” she assures a woman who is debating about a unique sequin dress, combined with nylon.
In response to the question of which costumes she enjoys designing the most, she gives a surprising answer: “Poor people, village people, like the simple people in the Hunchback of Notre Dame. But I love almost everything I do, and there are many. In the performance of The Hunchback, I especially liked Esmeralda’s dress, which really created a movement On the stage, and Quasimodo’s clothes and mask. In general, this whole period is beautiful – the hats, the shoes, the cuts.”
And what is difficult about this job?
“There is a lot of dirty work. Sometimes I also work very hard on something, but in the end they decide it won’t go on stage, and then it really sucks.”
Why are you actually selling the costumes?
“For forty years, we have accumulated costumes, most of which are no longer in use, and part of the team thought it would be worthwhile to air out the warehouses.”
I hear hostility.
“It was hard for me to say goodbye to the outfits,” she confesses. “At first I didn’t agree to the sale, but Oded pressed on.”
The Oded in question is Oded Yitzkan, the CFO of the theater, and we approach him to get his version.
You are blamed for pushing this sale.
“Why blame?” He smiles, “I’m completely proud, look how beautiful.”
But why sell history like that all of a sudden?
“Because it’s two birds with one stone. Our warehouses are blown up and there’s no room for anything anymore. On the other hand, the theater is always in a state of financial distress. So we also freed up space, we also made money, and we even earned publicity for the theater. What’s wrong?”
Oded Yitkan, CFO: “Our warehouses are full and there is no more room for anything. And the theater is always in a state of financial distress. So we also made room, we also earned money, and we even earned publicity”
Are you happy with the sale so far?
“Very. There are a lot of buyers, both today and on the previous days of the sale we sold hundreds of outfits and the atmosphere here is great. The only problem is that my age is emotionally attached to outfits, every outfit we wanted to sell I had to take out of her hands.”
Near Kochavi Vitzkan and away from the inner intrigues of the theater, two elderly women are trying on a huge and magnificent ball gown, the dream of every girl everywhere. These are Mina Gefen and Terez Ben-Zachar. “My friend Terez dragged me here,” complains Gefen. “I enjoy the clothes but I don’t enjoy my size,” she adds a classic complaint. They have already found a nice jacket in the corner of reality, and now her friend is also trying on a pink dress.
Are you looking for something specific?
“What’s the matter? Women buy the most when they just go shopping,” Terez Ben-Zechar responds decisively while Gefen hesitates, in what seems like an old dynamic. I say goodbye to them in favor of a young couple measuring outfits next to us. He is a medieval knight and she is, of course, a princess. Dvir and Shilat David came here from Sensana, to look for a costume for the Yishuvi ball. “Pretty to us?” they ask their bored girl on the couch who nods vigorously, perhaps calculating the prospect of a visit to the ice cream parlor after they finish the measurements.
“We went to a toy store to look for costumes for the holiday,” says David, “and I told Shilat that it would be a shame to spend NIS 200 on a costume of poor quality that will go to waste after Purim. Suddenly she said to me, ‘Listen, there is a sale of real costumes at the theater!’ So we came, and it’s really really nice here and the costumes are amazing. Only, not that cheap.” We say goodbye to the couple who go on to another outfit, a velvet winter cloak that looks like it came straight off the set of Game of Thrones.
Next to one of the racks I meet her father Abdi as he measures a jacket. He is a first-year acting student at Goodman, the acting school in Be’er Sheva, and came to help with the sale and, of course, to find a costume on the way. In the meantime, he mostly meets friends.
What is theater for you?
“It’s a world where you learn something new every day. It’s like a bug, only without a cure,” he sighed. Ivri says that he came to the Goodman school specifically from the center, even though there is no lack of acting study centers there. “It’s a family place. They see your potential and let you grow, there’s no pressure and criticism like in Tel Aviv. Except that in Be’er Sheva it’s much cheaper and fun to be a student,” he laughs.
Not far away, an elderly woman is debating about a dress she is holding. Ziona Shmueli is an avid theater lover who came here to recreate an old success: forty years ago there was also a sale here and she found one beautiful dress, from the famous play “Three Sisters” by Anton Chekhov. “I was the only one who thought of it,” she says with sparkling eyes, “and of course I bought it.” She still hasn’t found anything today, but she doesn’t give up, she patiently goes from hanger to hanger.
A comprehensive search among the various items brings up alarming findings: the average size here is 36 and 34. Are all theater actresses so thin? It seems that they haven’t heard of women of realistic sizes here yet.
The hours pass quickly between the costumes, and yet it’s Friday. It’s time to say goodbye. But then I’m drawn to see one last outfit, then another red velvet robe, then another. In the bathroom I find two high school girls trying on medieval ball gowns, tightening the laces together. “Please don’t let me buy this dress for NIS 500,” one begs her friend, “please remind me that it doesn’t make sense.” The dress almost explodes (small sizes, did we say?) They burst out laughing, take selfies, and then also ask to be photographed.
It’s so much fun here in the theater that I think to myself that it’s worth coming back here. I really haven’t seen a good show in a long time. Here, an old man can be satisfied, the marketing was successful. And by the way, a dress was found at the end. Julia’s, but what?
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