Games in the Backyard

A group of boys invites a girl to forbidden games in a garden at the edge of the kibbutz. Group dynamics transform the seemingly innocent encounter between the youths into a scene of humiliation and gang rape. At the heart of Edna Mazya’s play, which has recently become a defining Israeli classic, is the rape trial, in which the victim becomes the plaintiff and the boys are forced to defend themselves. Like a sensitive X-ray, the fateful day is reconstructed ...