Orna Porat

Orna Porat was born Irene Klein on June 6, 1924, in Cologne, Germany.[1] Her father was Catholic and her mother Protestant; by adolescence, she had rejected both traditions and identified as an atheist interested in socialist ideas.[1] In 1934, at age ten, she joined the girls' branch of the Hitler Youth despite her parents' objections.[6][7] The extent of her involvement in the organization is not detailed in the available sources.

As a young adult, Porat read works by Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, and Bertolt Brecht and came to understand the atrocities of the Nazi regime.[1] She studied acting at a dramatic school in Cologne from 1940 to 1942 and was accepted in 1942 by a professional theater in Schleswig.[3] After the theater closed, she was conscripted into German military industry and operated searchlights used to detect enemy aircraft.[3]

When the war ended, Porat wanted to emigrate to the Soviet Union, but her plans changed after she met Josef Fruchter, a Jewish Brigade soldier working as a British military-intelligence officer.[3] Fruchter initially interviewed her in a professional capacity; the two fell in love and decided to go to Palestine together.[3] Her decision to leave Germany was connected to her deepening awareness of what had happened to the Jews during the war.[6] The couple moved to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1947.[3]

Porat arrived in Palestine in 1947 with little money and no knowledge of Hebrew.[1] She pursued work in Israeli theater despite these obstacles, attending numerous auditions and facing repeated rejection before finding a place at the Cameri Theater.[1] She joined the Cameri in 1948 and soon became one of its major performers.[8][1]

Unable to have biological children with her husband, Porat converted to Judaism in order to adopt, and the couple adopted two children.[8][1] After joining the Cameri, she adopted the Hebrew stage name Orna Porat at the suggestion of actress and director Yemima Millo.[1]

Following the Cameri's financial and artistic crisis in 1958, Porat was appointed to the theater's administrative board.[1] Her work therefore encompassed both performance and institutional responsibilities.

Porat took leading roles in major works of classical and modern drama. These included Joan of Arc, The Good Person of Szechwan, Mary Stuart, The Visit of the Old Lady, The Last of Her Days, Electra, Viola in Twelfth Night, the Mother in Blood Wedding, Volumnia in Coriolanus, Hecuba in The Trojan Women, Bernarda in The House of Bernarda Alba, and Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy.[9]

One retrospective described her as a central figure on the Cameri stage for 36 years. It recounted that she was retired from the company at age 60 under the rules then in force and later traveled to New York to play the mother in the same production in which she had begun at the Cameri as the daughter.[10]

Beyond the Cameri, Porat performed at Habima, Beit Lessin, Beersheba Theatre, and theaters abroad.[9][7] She also made screen appearances in the 1997 film Forbidden Love and in Eitan Tzur's 2010 film Outbreak X.[3] Her final appearance on the Cameri stage was the solo performance Or and Shadow, an evening of Leah Goldberg songs directed by her daughter, Lital Porat.[3]

Porat was also a director. Among the productions she directed were Adventure at the Circus, The King's Daughter, and The Miracle Worker.[9] Her directorial work was concentrated largely in children's and youth theater, where she made her most lasting institutional contribution.

She established and managed the Cameri's children's theater, which operated from 1965 to 1970.[3][8] When it closed, Porat founded an independent children's and youth theater in 1970 with then-Minister of Education Yigal Allon.[11] The new institution, eventually named for its founder, was conceived as a traveling theater bringing performances and theatrical experiences to children in more than 250 locations across Israel.[11]

The founding of the theater came at personal financial cost. Porat's daughter Lital recounted that her mother mortgaged the family home to establish it and that the family came close to losing the property before the Education Ministry eventually covered the debts.[7] The theater's repertoire was intended to help children and adolescents appreciate drama's artistic value and what one account described as "national and universal humane values."[12]

Porat served as president of the Orna Porat Theater for Children and Youth from its founding until her death in 2015.[3] She was also among the founders of the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (ASSITEJ), and she established its Israeli branch.[3][8]

Her involvement in a celebrated controversy from the Cameri's history offers a window into the pressures facing Israeli theater in its early decades. When the Cameri staged Hanoch Levin's political satire The Queen of the Bathtub, violent public pressure forced the production to close soon after opening. Porat, who was among the Cameri's actresses at the time, was quoted as saying: "We cherish freedom of speech, but we cherish our audience more."[13]

The theater's activity after Porat's death provides a quantitative measure of her institutional legacy. Listed among the public children's theaters of Tel Aviv-Yafo, it mounted 52 independent productions in 2015, 48 in 2016, 58 in 2017, and 58 in 2018.[4]

Audience figures over the same period demonstrate its broad reach. It drew 499,761 paying spectators in 2015, 506,987 in 2016, 557,070 in 2017, and 708,924 in 2018.[4] Mosaic described it as "Israel's most prestigious children's dramatic company."[5]

In 2023, the theater presented Aluf ha-Olam, a children's musical based on songs by Israeli songwriter Hanan Ben-Ari.[5] The institution's continuing activity reflects Porat's commitment to serious, artistically ambitious theatrical experiences for children on a national scale.

Porat received the Israel Prize for theater in 1979 in recognition of her lifetime achievements as an actress and founder of the children's theater.[1][2] She received the Kinor David Award on three occasions, in 1970, 1974, and 1980.[2] Honorary doctorates were conferred on her by the Weizmann Institute of Science, Bar-Ilan University, and Tel Aviv University, among other institutions.[2] She also received the Emet Prize in 2005.[1]

At her funeral, former president Shimon Peres described the stage as, for Porat, "an entire educational system" through which she taught values, brought different people closer, and promoted tolerance.[14] Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai said he would remember especially the theater she founded and its respectful, serious treatment of generations of young audience members.[14]

Porat collected and preserved materials throughout her professional life. In 2019, a representative selection of 22 items from her personal archive was registered, organized, and digitized by the National Library of Israel.[15] The catalog lists 23 records and 44 digital files, including family and childhood photographs, annotated scripts from productions in which she acted, and a recording in her voice played before performances at her children's and youth theater.[15] The preserved materials include a handwritten, ornate children's poem she wrote about her daughter becoming lost during a family stay in Paris in the 1960s.[16]

Orna Porat died on August 6, 2015, in Tel Aviv, aged 91.[17][3] Her funeral ceremony was held at the Cameri Theater on August 7, the day after her death.[3] She was buried beside her husband near Hadid.[3] The theater bearing her name carried on her work, serving hundreds of thousands of young Israeli audience members in the years that followed.

Most biographical sources report that Porat received the Israel Prize in 1979, including the Jewish Women's Archive and Ynet.[1][2] Habama also gives 1979, whereas a Jewish Virtual Library culture page says 1999.[3][11] Walla identifies the Hebrew award year as 5739 but parenthetically renders it as 1978.[6] This article uses 1979 because it is supported by multiple independent accounts.

Accounts of Porat's children's theaters describe two related milestones rather than necessarily contradictory founding dates. Ynet and Habama report that she managed a Cameri children's theater from 1965 to 1970 and founded an independent theater after it closed.[8][3] The Jerusalem Post highlights the independent theater's creation in 1970, while the Jewish Women's Archive says the Cameri program separated from its parent theater and became autonomous that year.[12][1]

A claim that Porat joined an underground anti-Nazi resistance group and conveyed documents appears in a 2023 Ynet profile based on her daughter Lital's recollections. The profile also states that Lital's book about her mother's early life is a fictionalized biography based partly on actual events and partly on the author's imagination; the wartime account should therefore be treated cautiously.[7]