Niko Nitai (1931-2020) was an actor, playwright, and theatre director. Romanian-born Nitai grew up in the capital, Bucharest, where he also studied theatre and film at university. In 1961 he moved to Israel and later, obtained a master’s degree in theatre from Tel Aviv University. Nitai took his first steps as a stage actor in Israel when he was cast in Haifa Theatre’s production of The Taming of the Shrew. He later appeared in a variety of productions at the Ohel (‘tent’), Habima National, and Tzavta theatres.
In 1975, Nitai debuted his hit one-man show, The Fall, which he had adapted based on the novel of the same title by Albert Camus. He would spent the next 45 years, almost to the day he died, touring and performing it across the country.
Nitai wrote several original plays (including The Intellectual, The Whore and the Clown, Hypochondriacs, One out of Ten, and others) and directed countless others, including Edward Albee’s The Death of Bessie Smith, William Gibson’s Two for the Seesaw, Shulamit Lapid’s The Inheritance, Man Equals Man by Bertold Brecht, and William Shakespeare’s King Lear where he also played the titular role.
In the early ‘80s Nitai took the decision to step away from mainstream theatre. He subsequently started Jaffa’s Simta (‘alley’) Theatre of which he was artistic director until the year 2000. The following year, in 2001, he started the Karov Theatre which, after three years, relocated to its permanent residence at the Culture Compound in Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station.
Israeli children of the 1980s will no doubt recall Nitai from his series regular role as ‘Assaf’ in the classic programme Keshet & Annan (‘keshet ve anan.’)
Highlights of his big screen credits include Eight Against One (aka Eight in the Footsteps of One) (Menahem Golan, 1964), Seven Times a Day (aka 7 fois… par jour) (Denis Héroux, 1971), and The Revenge of Itzik Finkelstein (Enrique Rottenberg, 1993).
