Israeli puppeteer, director, writer, and director. Naomi Yoeli has been an artistic consultant and dramaturge of The Train Theater (Teatron Ha Karon), the generative Israeli centre of object theatre, puppetry, and experimental work since 2004. She earned her PhD in Theatre Studies from Tel Aviv University (2002) writing on Zionist ceremonies as theatre and has been active in experimental and political theatre as well as creating work for children and general audiences for over 20 years.

Yoeli was a member of the artistic committee of the Akko Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre (2000-2004). Over the past few years, she has developed additionally her own independent theatre performances: the show Doda (Aunt) Frieda: The Museum (2006) won the Best Performance Prize at the 2006 Akko Festival; it recollected the objects from her aunt who emigrated to Israel as a Zionist in the 1920s with visions of fashionable Vienna still dancing in her head. The play Between Calendars (2008), an adaptation of a book by Nativa Ben Yehuda, was performed in collaboration with the Ruth Kanner Theatre Group, and won the best adaptation and best performance prize of Fringe Theatre, 2009. Explosive: War Tourism (2009) used porcelain dolls, blocks, and a small bus. Audiences were given binoculars to see the figure, Israeli tourists treating Palestinians disdainfully. Digital images were meanwhile projected on a large screen, and the work culminated in the killing, during the 2009 Gaza offensive, of young Palestinian girls in an Israeli shelling.

Work more specifically for child audiences is often done as paper theatre (toy theatre) with Galia Levy-Grad as a frequent collaborator. Rain Bird (2004), which has appeared at festivals in Korea, France, and other countries, uses origami style folded images to tell an ecologically motivated tale. Chelem Legend, Fool Moon (2012) shares Eastern European folklore in a pop-up book format to Klezmer music with additional shadow puppetry features. A solo show, Rose Bud (2010), based on the Sleeping Beauty story, also uses a pop-up book with images by Amalia Hoffman.

Naomi Yoeli has lectured and done workshops around the globe and, in 2008, won the prestigious Landau Prize for stage artistry.

(See Israel.)