Tel Aviv theater has a secret 'baby-maker'
Could the baby boom that led to 17 pregnancies among the cast of 'Fiddler on the Roof' be down to a piece of furniture endowed with mystical powers?
What happens behind the scenes of the play that has been playing at the Cameri since 2008 and has seen more than 17 pregnancies? If you ask the cast, and mainly the actresses, the baby boom that hit the cast is not at all a fluke – the matter at hand is a mystical occurrence.
Rama Messinger and her daughter Geffen
The baby boom began with 45-year-old Rama Messinger. When her six-year-old daughter Geffen was three weeks old, rehearsals for the "Fiddler" had just began. "Producer Haim Sela pestered me, 'come, come,'" she recalls. "I thought it wouldn't be right to leave such a small baby at home in order to play a part, no matter how charming it is. But he continued to nag me until I understood that this was a huge thing."
Messinger arrived with Geffen for all the rehearsals, with Sela serving as the on-hands babysitter. "I remember myself travelling with a car seat to rehearsals, being very hormonal. Director Moshe Captain was very patient. We had to stop the rehearsal every two hours because Geffen was hungry and I had to breastfeed her."
Messinger excitedly recalls one of the last rehearsals, when the entire theater management was sitting in the first row: "In the last scene, Tzeitel says "Oy, the baby,' and Tevye and Golde part with a baby doll. Sarit Vino-Elad, who played the role of Golde, took the initiative, snatched Gefen from Sela's arms and entered the stage with her. The entire row of people began weeping upon seeing the actual baby.
"Geffen served as the opening shot for this crazy baby boom," Messinge declares, explaining that in rational terms, the cast at the time was both very large and very young. "It's natural that actors will stick together. But beyond that, some fairy dust has really been scattered here. A month and a half after Geffen came to the world, actor Jacob Tamari had a child, and then the torrent began. There's something here that's been blessed. We laughed at first but it became something that cannot be ignored.
Herut Ashkenazi, Muli and Nina
"I was the first pregnant woman," declares Ashkenazi, 36, who has worked in the Cameri since the age of 22. She performed in the "Fiddler" up until she was nine months pregnant, and says that back then, she "wondered what he was thinking in there with all the movements, dances and songs on stage."
Muli, now aged four, was born during "Fiddler's" 200th anniversary, and his mother remembers driving to the celebrations while she was on maternity leave, a month after going through a c-section and still in pain.
"Before undergoing surgery during my first pregnancy, the anesthesiologist asked me what I do for a living. I told him I was an actress. He asked where, and I said 'Fiddler on the Roof', and that's the last thing I said before the surgery. On the day that I gave birth to Nina, we had a double (two rehearsals on the same day). I was in surgery at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and kept on thinking about the play that was being put on at those very moments, at the nearby street."
Ashkenazi also shares tales from the Cameri's fertility-boosting room: "Anyone who sat there became pregnant. We sent new actresses to sit there as well, and it worked."
Shimrit Sasson and her daughter Danielle
Shimrit Sasson, 33, who is eight months into her second pregnancy, continues to perform regularly while her daughter Danielle plays in a backstage room. Sasson names all the pregnancies that seemed to come from that room, as if to prove the authenticity of the legend about what she terms as the "lucky room".
"The production is blessed. You don't see this amount of pregnancies and matching of couples in any other production."
Roni Sheindorf, Nir Grinberg and Gali
They met during rehearsals for a play about Yitzhak Rabin. Nir Grinberg, 36, had been part of the cast of "Fiddler" since the beginning of the production, while Roni Sheindorf joined half a year later.
They admit that since three-year-old Gali was born, it has become harder to function as a couple who are both are actors. Therefore, Grinberg has in recent years put his career on a slight backburner, and become involved in a family business of daycare centers for children with special needs.
However, since "you can't put out the flame of acting," as Grinberg says, he performs occasionally. For Roni, on the other hand, acting is a full-time job. Currently, she is in five different shows at the same time, and attending rehearsals for the the play "New Criminals."
Ironically, Sheindorf had joined the cast of "Fiddler" to replace Herut Ashkenazi during her maternity leave.
"There's a discussion among the girls about a chair that makes you able to conceive. I sat there as well, like others who had became pregnant," says Sheindorf.
"To this day, actresses who want to conceive sit on it. Obviously there are women who want to become pregnant, work towards that end, and sit on the chair, and when that happens we say its because of the chair. It's a superstition, but it works."
Correction: This article originally incorrectly identified the theater as Habima and not Cameri
