About This Show
Writer/performer Iris Bahr’s acclaimed one-woman play returns to New York for a limited engagement.
Dai premiered last season at The Culture Project, after which it played a sold-out month-long engagement at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival in August. In addition to receiving two 2007 NY Drama Desk Award nominations, including Best Solo Performance, and a UK Stage Award nomination for Best Solo Performance at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, Ms. Bahr played an invitation-only performance of Dai in May for more than 100 U.N. Ambassadors and Diplomats at the personal request of Israeli UN Ambassador, Dan Gillermann.
Dai transports us into the fast-paced world of a bustling Tel Aviv cafe just moments before a suicide bomber enters. Brought to life through Iris Bahr’s razor sharp characterizations, members of all strata of Israeli society, as well as its observers and critics, are captured in what are to be their final moments. But it is Bahr’s ability to find the humor and humanity in even the most dire and tragic circumstances that makes Dai sparkle, as we come to know these eccentric, lost, troubled souls, and peer into their hilarious lives, quirks and neuroses.
Far from a polemic, Dai is meant not as a political statement. Rather, it is designed as a freshly-cut cross section of people living in and visiting Tel Aviv that portrays many experiences and viewpoints. It is ultimately an exploration of the humanity of Israel, how lives are touched by the conflict and the internal ideological turmoil prevalent in Israeli society — a society that manages to sustain its humor and love for life despite the tragic existential crisis in which both sides find themselves.
