Ruby Porat-Shuval is one of the oldest actresses on the screen with dozens of series, movies and plays she has also written already. She also recently published her first children’s book, and if you ask her, this is just the beginning. Now in “Galit Vailanit” the actress talks about the long road she took from Roham and her parents’ criticism of her choice of acting along the way: “”I couldn’t come and tell my parents that I was going to study acting, it would be better if I said I was going to work at Tel Baruch”.
Ruby, who was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, immigrated to Israel at an early age to Yeruham. “There was no theater in Morocco, women who went to perform were belly dancers and promiscuous people who shove money into their bras. After I studied social work and got a diploma, I worked at Tel Givivor in Holon with youth in need, at the same time I studied acting. If they asked my mother what I was studying, then she She would say ‘psychology master’s degree’, but God forbid not to say acting.”
“My mother was able to see me in plays at the university, which was terrible and terrible for her. My first role was the role of a dirty boy and an apprentice of criminals who was dressed terribly. At the end of the play, she crossed all the actors and students and said to me, ‘That’s what you came all this way for? Shame and shame.’ . In the second play, I was already playing Lady England, so she said, ‘Oh, at least the clothes are fine.'”
Are there moments when you think about how proud they were of you?
“Before the show starts, I stand behind the screen and talk to my father and mother, sit them in the center of the hall and perform for them. I know that if they saw me they would be proud, I do social theater that comes from the field. I wrote all my plays after a very deep investigation, Almost anthropological of years. In ‘Seeds of Silence’ I was in the sperm bank for two years and also my next play ‘Little Lies’ was written after a very long investigation.”
It’s a play where you take us into ultra-Orthodox society, and it’s always very interesting.
“True, they themselves sweep and hide underneath, of course we are not exposed to it and dare not approach. I am now dealing with an issue that is hardly talked about, homosexuality in ultra-Orthodox society. The woman is accused of barrenness, when in fact her husband does not visit her after she comes from the mikveh. The rabbi expels her , and she can’t open it in front of him and say she’s fine.”
Today you are acting in a new production of the Bhima Theater and Beer Sheva, a play based on the movie “Aviva Ahuvuti”.
“Most of the show I’m in the window above and threaten to jump, and I’m very anxious. But my character there is the only sane voice there, she says the things without filters like a little child. Very funny but very embarrassing, because she tells the truth. The play is about a writer who works In the kitchen of a hotel in Tiberias. Her sister introduces her to a very successful writer from Tel Aviv who will help her with writing. In the end he takes the stories from her and gives her the credit of an investigator, and himself all the credit.”
This year you wrote a book in honor of your granddaughter.
“It is correct to call the book ‘Let there be a happy song’, it is based on positive psychology. Classical psychology focuses on opening wounds and then closing them, positive psychology focuses on what will make us happier. Our brain does not know how to differentiate between real and staged laughter because the very act of smiling secretes the substances of The joy. So in the book the grandmother teaches her granddaughter how to be happy.”
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