Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre

The festival was established in 1980 by actor and director Oded Kotler together with collaborators.[2] Kotler has said he was tired of institutional theatre and wanted to create something more experimental that would inspire a younger generation with a new creative impetus.[2] Acre's ancient Old City, with its Crusader-era halls, historic alleys, and underground archaeological spaces, provided a striking setting for this vision.[2]

Acre — known in Hebrew as Acco and in Arabic as Akka — contains architectural remains from successive civilizations. The festival turns its halls, alleys, squares, and underground spaces into performance venues extending beyond the boundaries of a conventional theatre.[1][2] It is held every Sukkot, during a week filled with national holiday events across Israel.[1][6] Over subsequent decades, it became an Israeli institution for alternative and street performances.[2]

The festival is designed to provide a platform for experimental Israeli theatre and new theatrical languages, and Israeli government cultural materials describe it as a venue where experimental Israeli plays receive premieres.[7] Its core structure is a competitive program — typically selecting around ten productions from approximately one hundred submitted entries — alongside open street performances, international troupes, and ancillary events.[3][7]

Performances make use of the entire Old City as a stage: the Knights' Halls, historic alleys and squares, underground Crusader-era and Templar spaces, and archaeological sites including the Hospitaller Fortress all serve as venues.[2] Street performances regularly draw tourists and passersby into the event.[2] One documented program featured 66 productions scheduled across 430 performances, nine competition productions in the Knights' Halls, and 47 Israeli and international street-theatre performances including 17 premieres. It also included exhibitions, sound and video installations, sea-based performance, live statues, workshops, and lectures.[4]

Over its history, the festival has used several names interchangeably — alternative, experimental, other, youth, street, fringe, and Israeli theatre festival — reflecting the breadth of work it has sought to present.[4] Annual slogans have at different times called for friendship between Arab and Jewish actors, cooperation between veterans and newcomers, Mediterranean theatre, and cooperation between older and newer theatrical traditions.[4]

In 1985, without deliberate coordination, eleven of the festival's twelve major productions featured "living dead" characters on stage — a striking convergence presented as evidence of the festival's sensitivity to the anxieties of contemporary Israeli society.[3]

The 2019 edition marked the festival's 40th anniversary and was expected to attract approximately 120,000 visitors.[2] About 60 Israeli and international troupes from Italy, China, India, the United States, and elsewhere presented work over four days on stages and in the alleys of the Old City.[2]

The 2021 edition, the 42nd, marked the return to live performances after a virtual festival the previous year during the COVID-19 pandemic.[8] Its program included hundreds of performances in halls and open-air settings, eight competition premieres, four short plays, and street performances open to the public, with venues spanning the Acre Fortress, the Knights' Halls, and the city's alleys.[8]

The 44th edition took place October 1–4, 2023, during Sukkot, with the main competition in the Knights' Halls and additional activity throughout the Old City.[9] The program included 20 theatre performances, of which 14 were original plays; eight were premieres, six came from the Acco creative hub for promising directors and writers, and four were visiting productions.[9] Approximately 40 free street shows and special events were held in Acre's alleyways each evening from 6 p.m., and international groups from the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, and Spain also participated.[9]

The festival's 2025 edition was postponed due to the Israel-Hamas War and rescheduled for April 14–16 during Passover — an unusual departure from its traditional Sukkot timing.[10] Despite the disruption, organizers received 264 applications for the competition.[10] The rescheduled program was more compact than usual, with six competition plays, two incubator productions, and four international productions.[10]

The festival has consistently addressed what one survey called the "hot topics" of Israeli society.[3] Themes appearing across its competition productions have included post-war and post-traumatic stress, the social climate of a divided society, democracy, aging and loss, Holocaust memory and testimony, and the human relationship with nature.[9][10]

The 2023 program included a competition production examining the 1959 Wadi Salib riots and their impact on Mizrahi Jews, another exploring the prospects of a young Arab Israeli man, and a third dealing with the traumatic effects of rape.[9] The 2025 program, shaped by the ongoing conflict, addressed the personal cost of war, renewal, silence, memory, and rape as a weapon of war.[10]

Artistic director Dalia Shimko, who led the 2023 and 2025 editions, described the program as representing a wide range of voices and focusing on social and existential issues.[9] Festival CEO Lizo Ohayon characterized the event as a vehicle for cultural resilience, connection, bridge-building, and hope, while Acre Mayor Amihai Ben-Shalom called it "an island of creativity and meaning" during the difficult period surrounding the postponement.[10]

Beyond presenting new work, the festival has functioned as a career-shaping competition whose results can affect the subsequent careers of actors and directors.[4] Its selection of about ten productions from roughly one hundred submissions, together with its sustained engagement with contemporary Israeli concerns, has made it an important showcase for alternative theatre.[3]

The festival has generated a body of scholarly and editorial work. A Hebrew-language volume titled 25 Years of the Acco Festival of Alternative Theatre, edited by Honi Ha-Me'agel and Shimon Levy with research and textual contributions by Dani Vilensky and others, is held in the National Library of Israel.[11]

A more extended academic treatment was produced by Naphtaly Shem-Tov, whose 2016 book — published by Academic Studies Press in Boston and running to 227 pages — examines the festival as both a site of celebration and confrontation, covering its development from 1980 to 2012.[5] The work originated as Shem-Tov's doctoral dissertation at Tel Aviv University, completed in 2007 under the title Akko Festival as a Site of Struggle in the Theatrical and the Social Fields.[5] Its documented areas of inquiry include artistic direction, repertoire, organization, budget, infrastructure, reception, and the relationship with the Acco host community.[5]

The festival's intersection of art, politics, and communal identity has not been without friction. In 1987, its artistic director was accused of presenting an overly political repertoire because many selected works dealt with what the source described as the low status of Palestinians in and around the "Occupied Areas." Six weeks after the festival, the First Intifada began; the chronology was presented as context rather than proof of causation.[3] Scholarly analysis frames the festival as a site of both celebration and confrontation, bringing together established mainstream directors, alternative artists from the theatrical fringes, and Acre's Jewish and Arab residents.[5]

Official and journalistic coverage has repeatedly presented the festival as a space for Jewish-Arab cultural cooperation.[4][8] Acre Mayor Shimon Lankri presented the 2021 edition as a symbol of unity following violent riots in the city, underscoring the degree to which municipal and festival leaders consciously positioned the event as a counterpoint to communal conflict.[8]