Shlomo Bar-Shavit, whose life mirrors the history of Israeli theatre, has appeared in more than 260 productions, including as Nazi doctor Josef Mengele

Just shy of 90 years old, Shlomo Bar-Shavit claims to have performed more stage roles than any other actor in Israel. At least 260, he boasts, in a career that predates the creation of his home country in 1948. “I was there from the start,” he says. And in many ways, Bar-Shavit’s life has mirrored the short history of Israeli theatre.

The Israeli of Lithuanian descent spent his childhood in more than a dozen foster homes in British-ruled Palestine. At 16, he performed his first play in a kibbutz, one of the secular agricultural communes run by the pre-state Jewish population, many of which promoted theatre and music.

“This country was built by Jews coming from Europe. These were people who needed culture … This was the new synagogue. People gather. In a way, they are praying; they cry, they laugh. The synagogue of the Zionists was the theatre,” Bar-Shavit says. “We felt, as actors, that we were fulfilling an important role.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bar-Shavit in The Main Player, a play charting Habima history, in 2008. Photograph: Grard Allon/Habima Theater Archive

He later performed for Jewish militia during wartime, and spent his adult life devoted to Habima, Israel’s national theatre, which grew its global reputation as Bar-Shavit was nurturing his own.

Habima, which means “the stage”, began as a Hebrew-language theatre for Russian Jews in 1917, and Zionist immigrants to Palestine brought it with them. The first Hebrew plays focused on themes of pioneering and the struggles of setting up in a new place.



A tattered pamphlet distributed in 1938 and signed by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who would go on to serve as president, called on Jews for donations. “Bring your bricks for the Habimah home!” it said of “the first Hebrew theatre in Palestine”.

The theatre’s rise was hampered around the time the Jewish community declared independence. While fighting a civil war with Arab Palestinians, the new state was invaded by surrounding countries.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bar-Shavit in 1955. The actor says he has ambitions to perform in the surrounding Arab countries. Photograph: Habima Theater Archive

Across the road from Bar-Shavit’s home, there is a plaque commemorating the recruitment service of the pre-state army, the Haganah, and its underground radio station.

“There were no young actors because they were all in the army,” Bar-Shavit says. Yet theatre thrived in the new state and he enrolled in an army troupe that performed for soldiers to raise morale.

“War is a terrible thing. Soldiers need these moments when they can laugh and sing. We were acting and they were sitting and singing with us under the trees. It was before they went on an operation and some of them didn’t come back,” he says.

“The conditions were really difficult. Even the truck that was carrying my unit hit a mine. There were many badly injured. I flew 12 metres from my seat.”

After the war, the Habima theatre was completed, having for many years held plays in the open air. It was inaugurated as the national theatre in 1958 and ran plays inspired by biblical and Jewish literature, with other dramas on life in the Jewish diaspora as well as western classics. Habima toured the US and took on international directors. “The dream of the Jews was to come to live in Israel, and the dream of Habima was to be a theatre in the state of Israel,” Bar-Shavit says.

As Israeli theatre developed, directors began to take artistic risks, with Bar-Shavit at the centre. In the late-60s, he played Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on Jewish prisoners during the second world war. “There were [Holocaust] survivors in the audience. They spat on me. With that play, I took them back to Auschwitz.” At the time, he says, police had to patrol his house amid fears he would be attacked.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bar-Shavit in 1998. In the span of his life, Israeli theatre has grown exponentially. Photograph: Habima Theatre Archive

Bar-Shavit, who is now retired and has Parkinson’s disease, remains a man of the stage. At home, he wears a black shirt, black trousers, black socks, black trainers – the attire of stage crew. A Shakespearean Richard III painting hangs in his living room.

Despite coming from a religious family, Bar-Shavit has lived a secular life (“If there is a God, why am I sick?” he asks) and is cheerful when looking back at his years.

In the span of his career, Israeli theatre has grown exponentially. There are few nights when the country’s stages, of which there are more than a dozen, are not being used.

But he wishes, he says, that he could have played in the surrounding Arab countries, places where he never received an invite as international relations remain sour. There may still be time, he suggests. “If people want to see me, I will go to play.”