The Day Martin Buber Was Buried

An Original Musical Play by Yehuda Amichai
A collaborative production by The Revolution Orchestra and The Fringe Opera Center

This groundbreaking production marks the first-ever adaptation of a Yehuda Amichai radio play into a full musical stage work. Few are aware that, beyond being one of Israel’s most beloved poets, Amichai also wrote radio dramas — The Day Martin Buber Was Buried (1968) being among the most striking.

The story follows a pair of lovers who, after their love has ended, try in vain to retrace their affair and capture its final moments. Yet the sounds of the world around them — Jerusalem’s voices, colors, and heavy historical atmosphere — flood their memory, blurring their search for rest and oblivion.

In the stage adaptation, the play has been reimagined and interwoven with songs drawn from across Amichai’s poetic oeuvre, newly composed especially for this production. The dialogue between his existing works and these new compositions embodies the play’s core idea: dialogue itself — the essence of Martin Buber’s philosophy of I and Thou — a dialogue that “died” on the day Buber was buried. This musical drama is an intimate reflection on the act of listening — a deeply Jerusalemite, local text that carries a universal message, exploring the tension between memory and forgetting, word and sound, love and silence. The performance features a full orchestral ensemble and four actor-singers, with members of The Revolution Orchestra themselves taking part in the drama — both as musicians and as characters surrounding the central couple.