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.

Photo: Zvi Roger

The theater groups are composed of residents of eastern Haifa, and constitute a representative mosaic of multiculturalism in the Land of Israel in general, and in the city of Haifa in particular.
With the Foundation's support, the Festival gains a significant advantage, and expands its wingspan to other community centers throughout Haifa. The Haifa Arts Foundation has a significant part in the community-cultural activities at the Nave Yosef Community Center.
Haifa Arts Foundation supports the Festival since 2005.

The Nave Yosef Festival, held in cooperation with the University of Haifa, takes place since 2005 in the city's eastern area. Among the cultural events that the Festival offers are theater plays, music shows, street events, a mini jazz festival, jam sessions, handiwork stalls and street artists.

Attracting thousands of theater and community fans from all over the country, the Festival offers classical plays, original plays by Israeli playwrights, new and veteran immigrants, as well as innovative adaptations of familiar stories and children's plays.

Alongside the plays performed in the halls, various outdoor events take place in the streets of the neighborhood: a mini jazz festival, jam sessions, poetry evenings and an exhibition of paintings.

The children receive special attention at the parents and children compound, with handiwork stalls, Puppet Theater, petting corners, storytellers and more.
Youths and young people enjoy X-box competitions, hip-hop (freestyle) shows, capoeira and juggling.

Photo: Zvi Roger

The plays are performed in the community center's halls and in fifteen other community centers. The Festival includes plays in Russian and Arabic, as well as by Ethiopian-Israeli artists.

The community theater fulfills its vision by reaching all communities the Festival wishes to affect, and by bringing culture to those who usually are not consumers of such events. Making such events accessible is immeasurably important, since the Festival brings the plays to the communities' doorsteps.

The entire event takes place in four languages: Hebrew, Amharic, Arabic and Russian, thus serving as a platform for dialogue between the various cultural and national groups living side by side in Haifa, and promoting empowerment of identity.

Nave Yosef Community Center, Haifa
04-8129213
www.nycc.org