Theater

Haifa International Children's Theater Festival takes place annually on Chol Hamoed Pesach at the Haifa Municipal Theater. Haifa Arts Foundation supports the Children's Theater Festival since its inception. The Foundation has helped various productions and projects and gave awards to artists in different categories: playwrights, directors, actors and actresses, set design, costume design, lighting, incidental music and more. The Festival's jury selects the winners. In recent years, the Foundation awarded the first prize to winners at the Best Children Play category, and bought tickets for underprivileged children.

The main event of the Festival is the competition between new plays, premiering during the Festival. The Festival's artistic committee chooses for the competition 5-8 plays out of dozens submitted each year. The plays are nominated for various categories of awards, including Best Play. A team of jurors, appointed by the Festival's Board, selects the winners.

Among the competition's goals: developing the field of children's theater in Israel, improving the quality of children's plays, encouraging original Israeli playwriting   and raising the awareness of young audiences to the theater.

The Haifa Arts Foundation helps in purchasing tickets for the Haifa International Children's Theater Festival. The tickets are intended for children of Old Brothers, Larger than Life and other associations, in accordance with the recommendations of Haifa Municipality's Social Services Department, which distributes the tickets.

In 2008, the Haifa Arts Foundation helped fund tickets for the Festival's shows, for residents and children of the Sha'ar HaNegev regional council and for the children of the Gaza perimeter who arrived in Haifa to take a breather from the shelling. The Foundation also financed the transportation for the children of Sderot and the Gaza perimeter. The residents of the council enjoyed a coveted and pleasant respite.

In 2018, the Haifa Arts Foundation helped in the purchase of about 370 Festival tickets for the children of Haifa.

In 2024, the Haifa Cultural Foundation purchased 100 tickets for the residents and children of Haifa, from low socio-economic strata, in cooperation with the Welfare Services Administration of the Haifa Municipality.

The Nave Yosef Community Theater Festival, the largest of its kind in Israel, offers dozens of music and theater performances over a period of three days.
The Haifa Arts Foundation supports the community theater groups, which are active during the year and prepare for the festival.

In January 2016, at a scholarship awarding ceremony held at the Municipal Conference Hall, HAF awarded a scholarship to Uri Lev, student of the Theater Department of the Performing Arts Center. Mrs. Hedva Almog, Deputy and Substitute Mayor of Haifa; Bracha Sela, Acting Director of the Foundation and Secretary General; Aviva Spiegelstein, Director of Haifa Arts Foundation; scholars and their families attended the event.

Act 2 Festival
On November 24-26, 2009, The Studio Theater, a workshop for original theater in Haifa, presented Act 2, a two-actor theater festival, premiering 12 original Israeli plays written specifically for the festival. Haifa Arts Foundation awarded the first prize for the festival's winning play.

Literature / Theater / Music / Art

The Haifa City Center Theater is the first professional independent (fringe) theater in the city. Yigal and Tamara Amitai and Adv. Sarah Doron founded the Theater in 1996. Its name relates to the initiative to revitalize Haifa's city center (Hadar) as a municipal cultural hub, believing that artists in general and theater people in particular can serve as a bridgehead. The initial troupe of actors was composed of local and ex-locals forced to leave the city, who were happy to return to create in it. Later on, graduates of the Haifa University Theater Department joined the Theater. 

"I Will Be an Opera Singer"

Haifa City Center Theater - Amitai Team—Yigal Amitai, Tamara Amitai and Danny Amitai—produced an original opera for the whole family called I Want to Be an Opera Singer, and in the new version I Will Be an Opera Singer.  Haifa Arts Foundation supported the production of the show, which was also presented at the Haifa International Children's Theater Festival in 2008.

This group of theater students produces plays in Arabic, performed to students of Arab schools in Haifa and the surrounding area.

Haifa Arts Foundation assisted Haifa students who study in high schools for theater and cinema, with tuition fees in acting schools. Haifaite artists were awarded theater scholarships at the recommendation of the HAF's Theater Committee. Other scholarships have assisted productions of individual artists.

Theater Project for Students

One of the largest and oldest ventures of the Haifa Arts Foundation is to encourage students in various educational institutions to watch theater performances, as part of the Municipal Theater's subscription project or as part of the Ministry of Education's recommended plays presented to the educational institution.

Authorizing Haifa – Haifa Literature Celebration, June 2022

Haifa Arts Foundation, in collaboration with the Haifa Municipality and the National Lottery Council for Culture and Art, supported Authorizing Haifa – an event of music, theater and art, produced by A Place for Poetry.