Education and Professional Practice:
1983-1986 - Graduated Theater Directing Studies at Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv
Professional experience - Appointments and Positions:
Artistic direction:
1989-1993 - Resident director in "Habima" Israel National Theater.
1996-2001 - Artistic Director of the “Khan” theater of Jerusalem.
2001-2004 - Artistic Director of the "Israel Festival" in the fields of theater, dance and Israeli creation.
2004-2006 - Artistic Director of the "Lab" theater, Jerusalem.
2007-2011 - Artistic director of the "Herzliya Ensemble" theater.
Teaching:
1987-1989 - Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv
1989 - "Gitis" Theater Academy , Moscow
2001-2004 - School of Visual Theater, Jerusalem
Since October 2011- Teaching in the Theater Department, Faculty of Art, Tel Aviv University, Associate Professor. In 2015 she founded the Directing Department.
Experience - Professional activities and projects in Israel and abroad:
Theater Director (selection):
1987-1990 - Beit Zvi, the School of the Arts:
The House of Bernarda Alba, The Merchant of Venice, Bent (performed at the International Festival in Leningrad), Equus (performed in Moscow International theater Festival).
1989 - Young Opera Moscow: The Prodigal Son.
1989-1993 - Habima theater: Gold, The Night of the Twenties, The Glass Menagerie, Punktchen und Anton, Hypolitus, Creditors, Low Depth.
2002 - The Screens (in cooperation with the Berlin Festival), Alice in Wonderland.
1994-1995 - Be'er Sheva municipal Theater:
Summer and Smoke, Educating Rita.
1996-2001 - Khan Theater:
The Wedding, Scenes From an Execution (performed in Brussels Kunst International Festival), Princess Yvonne, The Virgin from Ludmir, Sky, The Seagull , Back to Desert.
2006 - The Town of the Little People (performed in Lodz International Festival)
2005 - Lab Theater: Salomé
2006 - Theatronetto: In Spitting Distance ( A play which won the first prize at the festival Theatronetto and has been performed in the theater of Peter Brook in Paris , The Barbican center in London, Romaeurope Festival, the Sydney Opera, Theater Schaubuhne Berlin and others. )
The play was nominated among the five final candidates for the prestigious international prize: Freedom to Create.
Haifa Theater:
2010 - Ulysses on Bottles
2013 - Sea Breeze
2007-2011 - Herzliya Ensemble Theater:
Black Rain (in cooperation with Haifa Theater , has been performed in the international festival in New York ), Yerma ( performed in the International Festival in Budapest ; the show was created in cooperation with the actress Gili Ben Ouzilou and dedicated as a memory to her).
Don Quixote's Claim , The Town of the Little People ( a remake with the ensemble’s actors , the play was performed in the Municipal Theatre in Heidelberg , Germany, and at the Barbican, London ).
Three Sisters, Both Upon a Time (in cooperation with the Israeli culture festival in Basel, Theaterspektakel ,Zurich Festival, Tak theater Liechtenstein and the Haifa Theater.)
Six Characters in Search of an Author (Cooperation with acting students, Tel Aviv University)
International independent projects:
2012 - Yes, stand out of my Sun (in cooperation with Tak Theater in Lichtenstein, Theatersektakel, Zurich Festival, Spielart Festival Munich, and the Kur theater in Baden.)
2013 - Jungle of the City (Municipal Theater Augsburg , Germany). The play was performed with the ensemble’s actors, in the German language. Rehearsals included collaboration between directing students in theater department - Tel Aviv University and students of the Theater Directing School, Munich.
2015 - Three Dog Night (in cooperation with Deutches Theater-Berlin, Hellerau-Dresden)
2016 - Nathan Der Weise (produced by Goethe Institut, Tel Aviv)
2016 - The Bees Road (an independent project)
2018 - KIND OF (an independent project)
2021 - The Queen Commanded Him to Forget (Produced by Pierre Boulez hall, Berlin)
Membership in committees and artistic judgment:
1995 - Member of the committee - Fringe center in Tel Aviv - Jaffa
1998 - Member of the artistic Prize committee of the Acco Festival
1999 - Member of the festival's Prize committee of Theatronetto
2000 - Member of the artistic committee of the theater festival in Zurich Theaterspektakel - Zurich
Since January 2013 a member of a committee of scholarships for young artists from the cathedra for Human Rights named after Emile Zola - Faculty of Law, Rishon Lezion.
2016 - Member of the artistic Prize committee of the Acco Festival
2021 - Member of the artistic prize committee of Dance festival 1/2/3 Suzanne Dellal center
Awards:
1991 - Wins a scholarship for directing opera on a behalf of the American- Israel Cultural Foundation
1999 - Winner of the Best Director Award of the Israel Theater Prize for directing the classic play : The seagull (by Anton Chekhov). Khan Theater.
2000 - Winner of the Best Director Award of the Israel Theater Prize for the best show of the year: The return to the desert (by Bernard- Marie Koltez). Khan Theater.
2007 - Winner of Landau award for Arts a behalf of the National Lottery, for the achievements and excellence in theater creation.
2010 - Winner of Rosenblum award on behalf of Tel Aviv municipality for the entirety of her creation.
2011 - Winner of the best show (of the original Israeli play ) on the behalf of the Israeli Theater Award for “Youlisses on Bottles”. Haifa Theater.
Henig teaches in Tel-Aviv, creates in Berlin and lives with her partner - the poet Shimon Bouzaglo, in Daliyat al-Karmel.
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Gaza: Eyewitnesses
Yesterday`s Encounter
Terribly Human
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My (German) Concert
Proposal for a presentation - work in progress, 2025
For many years I have been asking myself, what for heaven’s sake
could have been the music that the Der Rattenfänger von Hameln
played to the rats and the children, which made them follow him, to their death.
I didn׳t find an answer.
This project is based on devotion to music. But also and especially to
understanding the context in which it is created, and the consequences
of that devotion to pure music. Does it have its own “blind spots”? The
art of music is abstract, but what happens when it is not accepted? It
might become the ultimate noise, and the response to noise is
aggression and violence, a chaos one is afraid of, one wishes to demolish.
The starting point of the process was Wagner׳s article: Judenthum in
der Musik, 1850.
In this article Wagner claims that the cultural roots of Judaism are
loud - prayers, mutterings, shofar cheers. According to him, any
attempt to create music from this cultural root will end in noise and
not in musical harmony, and if the artist is striving to achieve
harmonious music, following the influence of Christian music, in
order to be accepted in European society, he has to disconnect
from his environment, from his context, which leaves him with no
cultural roots at all.
Wagner knew Jews, they were the ״other״ for him, the ״other״ living
in German society. But in a contemporary reading of the article,
when we relax from the anger and the disgust - it actually reveals
the situation of the exiled artist, the immigrant or the refugee.
Between east and west.
Following this article, I will go on a journey and research, and I will
invite my partners to join me - a group of artists from different
cultural roots, speaking different languages. All of them, in one
form or another, are in the status of a migrant exile or refugee.
We will examine the development of music from the 19th century
until today, East and West, through its acceptance by society, and
through the often prejudiced attitude towards the music of ״others״
the colonialist or orientalist approach.
This project is not a concert. It is theater that uses the written word
and the sound to tell a story and to raise relevant issues, with a
combination of irony and personal stories, we would like to check
and research the combination of the music`s subjective beauty -
and the subjective dark and evil of the racism.
We are a group of artists, Israelis, Palestinians, Syrian, German.
Sources of inspiration: New writing, Wagner׳s essay,
Nietzsche׳s answers to Wagner, and a new adaptation of Franz
Kafka׳s short stories.
For many years I have been asking myself, what kind of music did
Der Rattenfänger von Hameln play for the rats and the children,
that made them follow him, to their death.
I still don`t have an answer. Maybe there is no answer, and
maybe the answer is hidden in the noise. In this theatrical piece
you will certainly hear a lot of it.
Ofira Henig
Future Projects
2026
My (German) Concert
2027
THE INNOCENTS, the night of resistance
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sko-studio