Above ground

For nearly an hour, Israeli artist Gabrielle Neuhaus’s feet didn’t touch the ground. Okay, for seven minutes they did. For the rest, she jumped, lunged, swung, climbed, stripped and hung on to chairs, tables, coat hangers, dustpans, brooms, water bottles, lamps and paintings. As bombs go off outside in Tel Aviv, she becomes obsessed with the dust that the explosions bring into her home, soiling her ordered world. At the 16th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, which concluded recently in Delhi, in a three-part non-verbal one-woman show, Neuhaus told us the tale of The Woman Who Didn’t Want to Come Down to Earth .

Why does ‘the woman’ not want to come down to earth?

It was December 2012. I was lying on my couch and looking at the room I was in. I remembered the games I played in my childhood in Switzerland, where we jumped from object to object. I wanted to see if I could make a similar aerial journey in my home, using objects. That was the first part. Then, I added layers — the second and third parts. These parts addressed the cycle of life, my Christian roots, the war inside and outside, letting go and holding on, wanting to touch reality and yet not.

Tell us about the women in the play, the one who doesn’t want to come down to earth and the one whose portrait looms large at the back.

Many viewers have noticed that the woman has an obsessive-compulsive disorder. She hates dust. It’s a lazy day and she’s cleaning tirelessly, listening to Bach. Even her choice of music reflects order and purity. When war rages outside, it upsets the order of her world. It’s only in the second part that the war inside comes into focus. The woman in the portrait represents her roots. At the time my mother had died and I had asked myself, ‘what can I do with my roots?’ The woman is questioning the notions of mother, authority, maybe even god. There are traces of me in the woman, I love Bach too but I don’t care for cleanliness that much.

The first part of the play is self explanatory and comical. The second and third parts are more serious, can you take us through the journey of the woman?

Every time I’m asked about her journey, I answer a little differently. It’s open to the audience’s interpretation. In the first part, as you say, she is a woman with an OCD problem. The second part is about the cycle of life, returning to the embryo. And in the third part, I embrace my Christian roots where I recreate the story of Jesus walking on water.

You strip down to the essentials during the play. Did NSD not object?

I don’t think there was any problem. I sent them (NSD) the video of the whole performance, they must have seen it. I certainly wasn’t asked to change anything. Even Utsushi (the non-verbal play staged by Japan’s Sankai Juku) faced no problems. And their routine has a lot more nudity. But there were no problems.

To recreate the walking on water bit, you created the illusion with Bisleri bottles.

I use 48-50 bottles every performance. And there is always something going wrong with the bottles. I have to constantly improvise.

What are you working on next?

There are two projects coming up. One evening in Tel-Aviv, when I was returning home, I found a food processor abandoned on a street. I picked it up and put it in my studio. I repaired it and it nearly works now. I plan to use this equipment to explore the idea of processing life events.

In March, I will present a play at a visual theatre festival. The theme this year is occupation, an idea I’ve never really explored. But I’m Swedish by birth, nationality has always been an ambiguous concept. Then I moved to Israel. My daughters have grown up under very different circumstances. So I’m looking forward to exploring this theme.

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