Shulamit Bat-Dori

Shulamit Bat-Dori (; 7 December 1904 – February 1985; Gutgeld) was a Polish-Israeli playwright, kibbutz theatre director and producer, and dance festival director. A member of Hashomer Hatzair and its kibbutz, Mishmar HaEmek, she was involved in the development of political theatre in Palestine, writing and producing plays that reinforced the ideology of the Kibbutz Movement. She was known for her huge, open-air performances that enlisted hundreds of kibbutz members and attracted thousands of viewers. She represented Israel at international conferences and was a professor in the theatre department at Tel Aviv University from 1965 to 1974.

Early life and education Shulamit Gutgeld was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Warsaw. Her father, Joseph Gutgeld, had been raised in a wealthy Haredi home and was married at the age of 16. After having two children, at the age of 21, he gave up Orthodox Judaism, deserted his wife and children, and moved to Warsaw without any means of support. In 1899, he married Helene, an assimilated Jew herself from a financially comfortable family. The couple had two children, Mordechai (born 1900) and Shulamit. Joseph committed suicide in 1922. Helene eventually moved to Israel and died in 1958. She also took both the action and the audience outdoors, erecting a real village, planting trees, and constructing an outdoor amphitheater on a nearby hillside.

Bat-Dori pursued further theatrical training in the 1960s, including a course with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York in 1960, a course with Bertolt Brecht in Berlin in 1961, and a course in technical lighting and sound in France in 1964. She earned a bachelor's degree from the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Tel Aviv. Despite her professional training, Bat-Dori never worked in professional theatre. Some of her plays, however, were staged at the Ohel Theater, Cameri Theater, and The Kibbutz Stage in Israel; others were performed in the United States, Europe, and South Africa. The 1958 production showcased 1,500 dancers, while the 1968 festival brought together 3,000 dancers and 60,000 audience members. For these festivals, Bat-Dori and project director Gurit Kadman encouraged the inclusion of little-known folk dances from the Jews of Libya and the Jews of the Atlas Mountains. Bat-Dori also directed two folk dance festivals that were staged in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa in 1961 and 1963 under the name From the Ends of the Earth.

Bat-Dori died in February 1985 and was buried at Mishmar HaEmek. and was also buried on the kibbutz.