Yaron Edelstein (born 1979) is an Israeli playwright and theatre director.
His plays performed in Israel, Germany and Italy, and have been translated into English, French, Polish, Dutch and Italian.
Edelstein won the Cameri Theater Best Playwright Award (2021),
the Israeli Fringe Award for Best Director and Best Dramatic Adaptor (2010),
the Acre Festival prize for Best Original Show (2013),
and in Germany, he received an award at the Heidelberger Stückemarkt for his play Mountain.
Among his original plays are Ringo, The Ephemerals, Mountain, Pfffffff.
Early life
Edelstein grew in Rehovot, Israel.
He graduated from the Department of Theatre Directing at the School for Performing Arts in Kibbutzim College Tel Aviv (2003-2006).
Career
Mountain, Edelstein's first original play, is a fantasy dealing with the Israeli ethos of bravery, follows five soldiers in an endless war. It corresponds to controversial combats in the history of the state of Israel and historical figures such as Israeli leader Ariel Sharon. In 2010 the play won an award at the Heidelberger Stückemarkt Festival in Germany and was chosen to be produced as a full production.
Timo Kirstin directed its European premiere in 2011 at the Theater & Orchester Heidelberg. Harald Raab, reviewing in the Nachtkritik wrote: "Edelstein gives an insight into the physical and psychological destruction of immediate experiences during warfare: no heroic epic, but also no striking anti-war piece. Just an Ecce homo - and therefore strong: young men who have not yet overcome their fear of the mythical woman and therefore boast about their sexual conquest adventures, in the extreme situation of having to kill and in the danger of being killed themselves."
In 2013 Mountain was staged at the Notzar Theatre in Israel, under the direction of Dalit Milstein, a collaborator in the writing process.
In 2009 Edelstein led an ensemble of writers and actors in the creation of Nana's friends, a satiric performance that ran in Tel Aviv's Tmu-na Theater until 2013.
The show was nominated for Best Ensemble Show in Israel Fringe in 2010.
Marat Parkhomovsky, writing for Time Out Tel-Aviv, described the show: "Theatre and funkiness are two notions that rarely meet. This is the rare case of a funky theatre: extreme, unexpected, fast, furious and authentically exhilarating."
In 2010, together with Tal Brenner, Edelstein adapted for the stage Sholem Aleichem's story The Creature. The adaptation, co-directed by Edelstein and Brenner, was staged in Seminar Hakibutzim College for Dramatic Arts and continued its run at Tzavta theatre in Tel Aviv.
Edelstein and Brenner won the 2010 Israel Fringe Prize for Best Adapted Play and Best Theatre Directors.
In 2013, Edelstein's play Pfffffff, co-written and directed with Aharon Levin, premiered at the Acre Festival for Alternative Theatre. Pfffffff won the festival's first prize
and continued to run until 2015 at The Incubator Theatre in Jerusalem.
Pffffffff, a dark farce, follows an Israeli submarine commander that has decided to take matters into his own hands and initiate a nuclear assault against Iran. Meanwhile, Israel's top politicians and security personnel gather in a desperate attempt to stop the imminent nuclear holocaust.
Introducing the event's final award, Yossi Sarid, chair of the Acre festival committee, described the show : "The play is dramatized and portrayed as a dark farce calling for complete freedom of the imagination. But on second thought and perhaps a third, it may be far more realistic than we suppose."
In 2014 the play took part in the IsraDrama and International Exposure of Israeli Theatre events
and was subsequently translated into English and Polish.
In 2014 Edelstein directed the show The Vampire, the Thief, the Prostitute and the Moon, which he wrote in collaboration with students at Beit Zvi School of the Performing Arts. The show, written in a fantasy style, brought to stage four original tales.
In 2015, Edelstein and Aharon Levin co-wrote and directed the children's play The Little Mole based on the best selleing book "The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business" by Wolf Erlbruch.
The show premiered in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
and in 2016 the production was nominated for the Israeli Children's Theatre Awards for Best Show, Best Directors and Best Original Music and won the Best Supporting Actor for Itzik Lilach.
In 2019 the play was translated into Italian and was directed by Claudia de La Seta and had its Rome premiere at the Teatro Tor Bella Monaca.