JNS
Meet the weird Israeli woman doing unusual couples therapy on stage.
A middle-aged Israeli couple comes on stage and reveals a deeply personal issue they’ve been suffering from for a long time in front of hundreds of strangers.
At first, there is laughter, but this can quickly turn into crying and even sobbing. Then magically, from the depths of pain, a solution often appears. And all this is orchestrated by a weird, foreign-looking woman with funny glasses.
So, who are you, Mrs. Ravia? The elderly woman with a thick accent wrapped in a kaftan and a handkerchief is actually a man.
Daniel Kishinovsky, a couples therapist who studied acting, says he adapted the character of an elderly lady he once gave a ride to in his car several years ago for the stage.
Her life experience, the spiciness flowing through her veins and the street wisdom with which she was endowed fell into his hands like a ripe tomato when he was looking for a character for a therapy exercise. Over the years, after extensive experience in his clinic as a couples therapist, he decided to bring her out into the light.
It quickly became clear to him that Mrs. Ravia was a trump card that helps crack personal and marital problems, quickly melting the ice. She is direct, respectful, clever and unafraid to delve into the depths of distress.
Mrs. Ravia doesn't know the couple who come up on stage or what pain they may share with her, but she doesn't hesitate to sprint for the unknown and seek to solve the couple's problem, on stage, in front of everyone, in the allotted time: just five minutes and 55 seconds.
What is it about her character that makes people willing to go through this difficult process with her?
"She treats everyone like her own grandchildren and loves everyone. She’s a non-threatening grandmother who comes in good spirits, but is capable of saying difficult things," Kishinovsky explains in a joint interview with his wife, Naama.
Kishinkovsky's wife also takes part in the show, concluding the session of each couple with an improvised song.
But with all the pepper and pungency that Mrs. Ravia brings to the show, it is clear to everyone that she does not come from a place of disdain, nor does she belittle the couples. Even when the audience laughs in sympathy, Kishinovsky greatly appreciates the couples who put aside their egos to contribute to the common welfare.
"In the clinic, you have to build trust, giving everyone a place to express themselves, and there's a whole process before diving into the thick of it," he says. "But when Mrs. Ravia is on stage, there's a kind of anticipation that something is going to open up. The couple knows that their job is to reveal a problem and they also want to find a solution. This is the catharsis that the audience, Mrs. Ravia, and the couple want to happen, and therefore everyone is tuned in and ready for this."
Perhaps counterintuitively, exposure of personal problems in front of an audience of hundreds helps things happen. "Magic happens here. God is here, and when He is not, we feel it. Sometimes things come up that no screenwriter could have thought of. A couple can go around and around for years, with both of them 'staying right' and not opening up to the other's point of view.
He adds, "Even with a therapist in a clinic, you can stay stuck and let him make an effort and not come down from the tree. But when you sit in front of an audience on stage, you are very exposed, and then there is no choice but to uproot the thing from the root. The truth is naked on stage. Everyone feels it and chooses to surrender to it."
Mrs. Ravia's show is mostly interspersed with laughter, but also with quite a bit of crying.
"People come up darkest, scariest, and most painful places. There is a lot of crying in the performances and very unfunny moments. There is also uncontrollable laughter and uncontrollable crying, and this means we touch very deep truths. Men of all kinds cry and sob, even the roughest men. It's a very big responsibility to touch people that deeply," say Daniel and Naama Kishinovsky, talking in turns.
"We always try to keep ourselves honest, debrief after each show, and examine our integrity within it, so that the laughter is not at the expense of the participants. We also call to ask how the people who came up on stage are doing and apologize if necessary, because on this stage, things are revealed to people that they never realized about themselves.
Bringing closure
They say it's important for them "to bring closure" to the therapeutic process and connect the couple to a therapist, if necessary.
"Through us, many people are opened to the world of couples therapy. There are people who are offended and hurt, and they also tell us that they were hurt. This indicates a lot of appreciation and trust. Almost every time someone was offended, after a conversation with them, it created a very close relationship, and usually they also came to our workshop afterwards."
At one of their shows for singles, a young man came up on stage, followed by another, who mistakenly thought that Mrs. Ravia had called on him. When he realized that he had made a mistake, he was upset.
"It was a humiliating and embarrassing moment for him," Kishinovsky says. "Mrs. Ravia stopped him and asked him what this meant about him and gave him a little therapy along the way, exactly on this point of his singleness."
"After this revealing moment, she created with him, the audience responded with palpable love for the young man. He accepted this love he received from the audience, and Mrs. Ravia helped him get off the stage with heightened pride," the couple says. "We later heard rumors that he met someone there at the show. So a potentially damaging moment became a moment of public uplifting," pointing out Mrs. Ravia's abilities to turn a negative into a positive, to take out the sting and turn a potentially negative situation into a positive one.
Mrs. Ravia touches on deep and difficult issues: Severe emotional wounds and post-traumatic stress disorder. More than once, couples discover that something that has been bothering them since childhood is having repercussions within their current relationships.
The silence in the audience creates a tense, magical anticipation that the problem can be resolved. And when that solution is finally revealed, it seems like the audience breathes a sigh of relief, as if you can actually hear everyone personally connecting with it.
Mrs. Ravia's audience is made up of all sectors of Israeli society. Ultra-secular kibbutzniks and ultra-Orthodox sit together, laugh and cry, identify with each other and smile. It turns out that human issues are common to every sector of Israeli society.
"People come for common values, because the peace of a couple connects with the peace within our people. We all have to learn how to live together under the same roof,” the couple says.
"The innovation that we bring to the world, as far as I'm concerned, is that there is a different way to live, that it is possible for couples to get back together and not remain alone closed inside their homes with their personal pain and difficulties," Naama adds. "We use the power of the community to heal and empower the individual."
"The real stars of the evening are the couples. We come and do our job, but they bring the thing that is most precious to them to the stage; what scares them the most. They are the brave ones!"
This article first appeared in Hebrew in Olam Katan.
