Ariel Efraim Ashbel

Ariel Efraim Ashbel is a Berlin based artist from Israel, who makes, thinks about, arranges, collects, initiates, curates and teaches stuff that people usually like to call "performance". Noted by the Israeli press as “the enfant terrible of Israeli Theater” and “Fringe’s best bad boy”, he's been directing theater works with his group “AKA Performance Squad" since 2000. He has presented his work at the Acco Fringe Festival (2000, 2001, 2003, 2006), where he won several awards and prizes, as well as in Israel's leading independent venues. His work is however not focusing on theater, and is about the development of interdisciplinary performances and events, located in the gap between theater, performance, music and installation. He also designs light for various Theater, Dance and Music projects, and collaborates with fellow makers as a performer and dramaturge. Between the years 2008-2010 he was the associate artistic director of the "IntimaDance" Festival for contemporary dance and performance in Tel Aviv's Tmuna Theater. Since 2011 he is based in Berlin where he's working, collaborating and occasionally DJing. So far he's worked on several projects in HAU theater, with performance collective Showcase Beat Le Mot, artist Yael Bartana for the Berlin Biennial, Jürgen Brüning at the Berlin Porn Film Festival, and had a residency at PACT Zollverein performance center in Essen.

Ashbel is a graduate of the Tel Aviv High School for the Arts (2000) and the School of Visual Theater Jerusalem (2006), and is currently finishing his BA in History and Philosophy at the Tel Aviv University. He won scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation in 2003/4, 2004/5, 2005/6 and 2007/8, the foundation’s creation grant in 2003, the Mayor of Jerusalem and the HaZira Performance Art Center prize in 2006, the 'Legacy' Foundation scholarship in 2007, and participated in the Goethe Institute and the International Theater Institution's residency program for young theater directors (2011).

Isabel and Ariel met at HAU project CASINO in June 2011, and has been thinking together since.