recently Woody
Allen's "Play It Again, Sam" ("How to Seduce
Women").
Among his awards and
distinctions as an "honored artist" were as "Knight
of Cultural Merit of Romania, First Class", "Award
of the Cultural Ministry of Romania", "Award of
Excellence" for his entire artistic activity (2009),
and "Stage Director of the Year" (2010).
E. is survived by Leonie
Waldman Eliad, the great actress of the State Jewish
Theatre in Bucharest.
His friend,
Jean Askenasy, a doctor of neurology at the
University from Tel Aviv, who wrote an article for
the online magazine CULTURA. The article, entitled
"Harry Eliad, a Tree Who Died Upon His Feet",
written in
tribute to E. after his passing, states (translated
into English from the original Romanian):
(…) Being fatherless at a young age, he knew the material and moral
wants determined by this tragic family situation,
(...) that developed in him a sensibility for the
suffering of others. His attraction for the
theatre was inborn in him. (…)
At age six he hid himself in the loft of the Theatre of Craiova, where
he watched
the rehearsals with fascination, and he
was happy to admire the actors and the stage
directors. Later he became friends with the
technical staff and became a common presence,
becoming
an integral part of Craiova’s theatre. This was the
little garden and the first school of Harry Eliad.
In his adulthood, when asked what was his first
love, Harry Eliad answered “Craiova’s theatre” .
Harry Eliad graduated from "Fratii Buzesti" high school and Cornetti
Conservatory, with a magna cum laude. His brilliant
debut was at age twenty-one with the performance of
"Însir-te
margarite", by Victor Eftimiu. At twenty-six, recommended by Toma Caragiu, he was hired at
the State Theatre,
Ploieşti. As stage director, he had a very
successful artistic career. Harry Eliad became
director of the State Theatre, Ploieşti, until 1989.
He created over thirty performances and brought to
Ploieşti
great actors from Bucharest: Margareta Pogonat,
Stefan Banica, Dumitru Furdui, Adela Marculescu,
Roman Bulfinsky, Ion Manolescu, Elvira Godeanu, Dan
Pop Martian, George Storin, Toma Caragiu, actors who became his close friends because
of his respect
and sincere appreciation. He also had the chance to
collaborate with major dramatists such as Aurel
Baranga, Victor Eftimiu and Paul Everac. At Ploieşti
he started his collaboration with television and
film and established international partnerships. It
was [during] his period of youthful enthusiasm that he wrote and
produced many musicals. He was also a lecturer at the
theatre department (stage directing) at the School
of Popular Arts, Ploieşti, and as teacher he
used all of his human and artistic experience. Harry
knew that the relationship between stage director
and actor, as well as the
relation between teacher and student needs a
[certain] distance that creates a compensatory
bridge. Harry believed that creating this bridge
with love and respect was the key to successful stage directing. (…)
In December 1989 he became General Manager of State Jewish Theatre
in Bucharest, a theatre of Yiddish language with a
millennial tradition. For Harry Eliad, this job meant a challenge,
and his success would depend on saving a
theatre in
leeway. He exchanged the countryside for
the capital, and he also exchanged the natal
language with Yiddish and became the
director of the State Jewish Theatre, with a
tradition of three hundred years. (..) on the building
frontispiece was written in Romanian and in Yiddish:
"Between 1941-1945 in this building the
Barasheum Jewish Theatre
functioned, keeping alive the flame of
Jewish culture" (...)
He started working, and with the help of the city
hall he succeeded in renovating the theatre. He
decided to equate the quality of the Yiddish theatre with
the extraordinary quality of Romanian theatre. His
wish came true when the young actors, impressed by
Jewish theatre’s glamour, learned the Yiddish
language. In this place of culture, between
1989-2012 -- for almost 25 years -- Harry Eliad, General
Manager of State Jewish Theatre, Bucharest, imposed
proudlyand with dignity in the Romanian
horizon his triple identity as human being (mensch),
Romanian and Jew. As evidence of his membership in the Romanian Theatre, he became stage director
of Caragiale plays. To demonstrate that he supported
the Jewish theatre, he staged the repertory of Avraham
Goldfaden, and to prove his quality as a human
being, he also staged plays by Anton Chekov and Nikolai Gogol. These
three choices [all] have humor in common.
In the Jewish Theatre directed by Harry Eliad, there lived
in a perfect harmony the classic and the
contemporary repertory, serving the Jewish, the
Romanian and universal culture, and there also lived
happy people of different cultures and various
religions. Harry Eliad was a visionary of
globalization. He succeeded in transforming the State
Jewish Theatre into an institution of theatrical interculturality. In many tours abroad he
represented the Yiddish repertory in the spirit of
Jewish drama and Jewish musical comedy, but his
theatre also had a strong, folkloric national
Romanian spirit. As manager of the International
Yiddish Theatre Festivals in 1991 and in 1996, in
Israel, Ukraine, Canada, the State Jewish Theatre
performed, danced and sang in Yiddish and in
Romanian (…)
His great repertory and stage directing skills were due to his
collaborations with talented stage directors
Catalina Buzoianu, Dominic Dembinsky, Grigore Gonta,
Horea Popescu, Ion Cojar, Alexandru Dabija,
Alexander Hausvater, Radu Afrim, Mihai Maniutiu,
Iosif Satz from Kishinev, Moshe Yassur from New York
and the stage directors from Habel Theater, Berlin.
Harry Eliad had a remarkable memory, impressive by
its exactitude. He also had the talent to
simplify the difficult things and to present the
sophisticated essential in simple words. (…)
Harry, the human being was concerned by the reality of the
anti-Semitism in Romania, obsessed by the question:
is it possible that Mihai Eminescu to be considered
a xenophobe, when, on the occasion of the first
performances of Jewish Theatre directed by Avram
Goldfaden, the great Romanian poet wrote in the
theatrical critique: "the beginnings of the Romanian
theatre interpenetrated with the beginnings of
Jewish theatre, mutual beginning that had as result
two great theatrical cultures?"
(…) Humor was the link between Yiddish theatre
and Romanian theatre between Harry Eliad and Ion
Luca Caragiale. Humor as the essential part of his
personality was seen as his attraction to Woody
Allen plays. Harry stage-directed the comedy "How to
Seduce Women" (after "Play it Again, Sam!").
Goldfaden’s "The Golden Thread" in Yiddish theatre
was absorbed and continued with glory by Harry Eliad. (...)
The belief of the State Jewish Theatre to keep alive --
by its performances -- the flame of Yiddish
language, was respected and conducted by Harry Eliad.
This language cannot die, it waits for new speakers,
new audiences, new fans of Yidishkeyt. Yiddish
language is a treasure of the human mind .(…)
"Our predecessors were faithful to this language even when they were
alone, in ghettoes, even when they laughed, cried
and prayed, and we took with this cultural heritage
the cult for Yiddish language", said Harry Eliad. A
human being with important international relations,
he was friends with Avi Hoffman of Paris and Shmuel
Atzmon-Wircer of Tel-Aviv. (…)
Leonie Waldman Eliad, his
long life partner, remains to keep alive the torch
of this cultural will of Harry Eliad.
Mr. Eliad loved musicals, opera, ballet, and classical
music. Chopin and Mozart were his favorite
composers. These preferences were evident in his
inspired versions of "Fiddler On The Roof" and
"Cabaret". Dedicated to the project. the "Essential
Sholem Aleichem", he stage-directed musicals
with Jewish folkloric songs, such as the successful "The
Sellers of Chaloimes" and "Menachem Mendl, the Novel
of a Businessman".
He wrote many articles and studies about the art of
the actor. He created plays, organized
symposiums, concerts, evocative meetings about [not
only] the classical, but also modern and contemporary
repertory. He was Vice-President of the "Avraham Goldfaden Cultural Foundation", and
was a member of the Management Council of the Jewish
Community Federation, Romania. In 2002, the
President of Romania decorated him with the Order of
Cultural Merit, as Chevalier. He received an
award from UNITER; The Gala of Theatrical Minorities and TVRI.
(…)
After a sufferance hidden with discretion and
endured with courage, Harry Eliad left the Romanian
Theatre and the Yiddish theatre as a happy man, for
living his life in dialogue with people throughout
the world. He died as he lived his
entire life
--
upon his feet."
Harry
Eliad passed away on 6 August 2012 and was brought
to his eternal rest at the Filantropia Cemetery in
Bucharest.
Sh. E. and Sh. E. from Edith Negulici,
Dr. Jean Askenasy. |