Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Journey to another planet

I woke this morning glad that I could see the familiar patterns of objects in my bedroom and glad that I could hear the sound of my wife calling that breakfast is ready. I woke this morning profoundly grateful.

Monday evening we went on a trip with our Hebrew ulpan to a performance entitled "Not by bread alone" by a theater group called "na laga'at" or in English "please touch." This is a unique troupe consisting of deaf-blind actors. They are located in a renovated warehouse at the Jaffa Port and their facility includes a theater and a restaurant. The theater itself is conventional, but when you enter you see ten people standing on the stage behind a gauzy screen, each one kneading dough at a table. They seem unaware of the audience's presence and then, of course, you realize that they are blind and/or deaf.

The play is started when a "normal" person dressed all in black beats a drum. The actors can feel the vibration and this tells them to start the action. Also, throughout the performance these "translators" guide the performers about the stage and translate by sign or touch language their "words" to each other. These are then also flashed on a screen, in Hebrew, English and Russian, for the audience to understand.

An actor stands and introduces himself, he talks in a distorted voice, he is blind and deaf. Without the screen translation it would be impossible to understand him. The other tableau and actions are choreographed in a sequence each started by a drum beat. The actors share their thoughts with us, simple hopes and dreams. One says if only she could wake and see the faces of her children, one wants to see her son return from the army, another dreams of walking unaided in the rain and another would like to go on a fishing trip. For each of them to simply go out of their home is a dangerous adventure, and they can never see the people just sitting in the park or hear the children at play.

This was a touching and moving experience, held together by the baking of the bread in ovens on stage and the expressed dreams and wishes of the actors. Yet, I had some troubling thoughts. I doubt whether this kind of play could be initiated in the US, since the actors are definitely exploiting their disabilities to obtain sympathy and to make money, and this might be considered a higher form of begging in a human rights environment that is both aggressive and assertive. On the other hand, the performances are somewhat artless, probably expressing their actual real wishes and desires, and as such lack the kind of drama that we usually associate with a stage performance, or am I being insensitive. After the show, the audience shared the bread that the actors had baked and then we ate at the adjacent restaurant where the waiters are also deaf.

This was a unique glimpse into another planet, one that coexists with ours, but nevertheless is experientially distinct. A journey to another planet whose existence we would prefer to ignore. It is said that a society can be judged by the way that it treats its least fortunate members. It is probably a truism that such a theater could not exist anywhere else in the world except Israel.

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