Yonatan Calderon Playwright and Poet

Contact: eMail | *

Yonatan Calderon is a playwright and a poet. Member of the “National Culture Program” theater repertoire committee at the Ministry of Education.

His first play, “Under the Skin”, was translated into English, Russian, German, Czech and Italian and was nominated Play of the Year at the Israeli 2016 Fringe Theater awards.

The play is based on a true story, a result of an archival research, and deals with an impossible romance between a lesbian Nazi officer and a female Jewish prisoner. Directed by Rakefet Benjamin, it performed for over three years at the Tel-Aviv Gay Center and later at Tzavta Theater and Habima National Theater. In December 2015 the production performed at the international theater festival MoldFest in Moldova.

In June 2017 the play was produced in London, directed by Ariella Eshed, received favorable reviews and was chosen as one of the ten most interesting shows in Camden Fringe Festival 2017 by Timeout London.

In November 2017 a dramatic reading of the play performed in “Israel Stücke Aktuell 2017” in Vienna, an annual festival of modern Israeli plays, and a year later a panel dedicated to the play, named “Why Memory?”, took place at the Wiesenthal Institute in Vienna.

Calderon’s second play, “Made He a Woman”, played at Habima National Theater, directed by Rakefet Benjamin. The play is based on the autobiography of Efrat Tilma, one of Israel’s first trans woman, who was bullied by the police in her youth and today she herself is a policewoman. In 2019, following the show’s publicity, Tilma has become the first trans woman to receive the honorary citizen of the city of Tel Aviv.

Calderon has a Bachelor degree with honors in Hebrew Literature and Arts from Ben Gurion University and Master degree in Theater Studies from Tel-Aviv University.

Published his poems in “Hatzrif” periodical.

As a homosexual, Yonatan Calderon often writes about LGBTQ themes.

Plays

Made He a Woman Comic Drama, Drama Subject: Biography, Friendship, History, LGBT, Prostitution, Suicidality, The Other | 2017 he | English