A dreamy world is conjured up by the deconstruction of local war images into an alternate reality, one with the same aesthetics but with new and personal connotation. The desire for this project came with the need to bring to life, resuscitate, the grotesque and disturbing images which have become inseparable from our lives, and in their repetitive nature, have brought us to numbness. A look at local imagery as local mythology, through its flat cartoon-like representation, the work attempts at bringing back these images into a three-dimensional world.

Choreography: Yasmeen Godder,
Artistic consultant: Itzik Giuli
Performers: Iris Erez, Kama Kolton, Asher Lev, Yossi Berg, Inbal Ya’acobi, Maya Weinberg, Arkadi Zaides
Original Live Music: Avi Belleli
Space Design: Gal Weinstein,
Lighting: Jackie Shemesh
Costumes: Alon Rodeh

Yasmeen Godder and the Bloody Bench Players presents: "Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder" was co-commissioned by the Lab- The Center for Performing Arts in Jerusalem and the Curtain Up 2004 Festival, with funding from The Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Mifal Ha Pais Foundation, and The Yoshua Rabinovitch Foundation.

"Regarding the Pain of Others- Yasmeen Godder deals with the wonders of the body, which encompasses a spectrum of emotions.  Every touch brings forth a sensation, laughter, sigh or scream.  In this work, the choking scream over a lifeless body is the main image, from which Godder goes on an exhaustive and exceptional journey, which examines what exists within that familiar newspaper photograph, so known to us, of a shot body which turns a human to a corpse, about which Susan Sontag wrote in her "Regarding the Pain of Others", in which there is no alternative to looking at it, due to a mixed emotion of disgust and fascination. Like in children's game, one dancer stands holding an imaginative gun, and another dancer fall on the floor.  But Godder's living dead man stands again, laughs and loves and suffers and dies, and women cry over him in an Esperanto of lamentation."
[Gabi Eldor, Ha'Ir  January 2005]

"There are not many Israeli artists, neither in dancer nor in other disciplines, whose work raises so much anticipation, curiosity and suspense.  In her unique way, Godder not only rose up to the expectations, but succeeded again to surprise, stir and challenge what is known and familiar…..Godder forces Israeli dance to redefine the borders of sensitivity, themes and even the make do with strawberry cream.  The smell of gunpowder will accompany the creative performers and us, the audience, wherever we go.  "
[Gilad Reich, Globs, November 2004]

"The understanding that the piece is a personal-political work, in its most immediate and instinctive level, contributes to the perfect timing of its coming about on the landscape of current activity here "
[Jacque Farber, Kol Ha'Ir  November 2004]

"It is 22:00, a solemn hour with Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder,  a piece in which the 8 dancers, coming from Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Jerusalem,  incarnate war better than any televised journal.  This is violence in its pure state,  in the bodies, the gestures,  the books.  The choreography is with unheard-of power.  It is bewildering for performers and public alike.  The dancers hassle each other like in the border.  Silent scream a-la Munch,  women in Pieta.  On stage like on earth,  the executioners become victims and vice-versa and there is one winner:  black despair."
[Midi Libre,  France June 18, 2005]