Performance art finds joy in concrete at Surround Festival

Performance art and visual theater set in an indoor parking garage in south Tel Aviv are the essential elements of the two-day Surround 2025 Festival, taking place October 31-November 1 at Beit Teper.

“It’s to make ourselves happy,” said Shahar Marom, the artistic director behind the event. “We did it last year in the middle of the war.”

The festival is held in the building’s auditorium and throughout the Beit Teper building, a squat, industrial-looking structure with a colorfully painted parking garage winding through its center.

Performances include a story of Cain and Abel set in the Wild West, a car that transforms consciousness, and a poetic duet between a human and a drone.

Other acts will include an athlete attempting the world’s biggest leap inside the building and a cabaret where everything unravels in a burst of color and sound.

“The building is fantastic,” said Marom. “It’s a place of adventures, and a few years ago I decided to hold a real festival in the building.”

In fact, said Marom, some of the audience come primarily to see the architecture.

Last year’s festival was sold out, said Marom, who until recently was the artistic director of Jerusalem’s Train Theater.

He thinks about the event in the context of the national mood surrounding the war in Gaza, and the still-unresolved hostage situation.

“People need to see other people, to be happy, to laugh, and the festival offers that ability for relief and hope,” he said. “It’s been a very challenging time. This is both for the audiences and the artists.”

The performances also reflect the ongoing situation, said Marom. The play involving the drone, and another about an apocalypse in a newsroom, are both related to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack and war.

Marom calls Surround 2025 “a gloriously glitched festival for a glitched world, an opportunity to get wonderfully unhinged.”

“I’m a wolf of culture and I delve into arts and culture no matter what is happening,” said Marom. “That’s my job.”

Tickets for Surround 2025 are available online. It will be held at Beit Teper, 5 Tel Giborim Street, Tel Aviv, 6-11 p.m., October 31 through November 1.