A Bike for a Year and Bars, both recent productions by the young actors of the Haifa Theatre Project Group, raised a two fold debate with both the public and theatre critics. One issue involved the artistic qualities of the shows as they reached the stage; the other concerned the social settings against which they were produced—for both productions were the results of special experiments in theatrical activity.

The initiator of the Haifa Theatre Project Group was Nola Chilton, a newcomer to Israel from the United States. A former Lee Strasberg student and now a member of a kibbutz, she is a resident director with the Haifa Municipal Theatre. Her most successful work there was based on a collectively compiled social research which evolved, over a prolonged period of study and experiment, into a stage-documentary.