World's First Deaf-Blind Acting Group

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When two Senses are Missing, three Others will Step Up. For the deaf and blind performers of Nalagaat, an acclaimed Israeli theater ensemble, the impregnable darkness, and silence are just reality, a black canvas on which to work. In the troupe’s “Not By Bread Alone,” which is to have its United States premiere at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University The actors of Nalagaat (Hebrew for Please Do Touch) can’t see or hear the audience; most of them can’t talk. Interpreters convey their inner voices according to a script, and supertitles in English, Hebrew and Arabic appear on a screen above the stage. Sometimes a silent-movie-type soundtrack tinkles in the background. At other times the audience is invited to sing along with a song composed for the show. All the while the actors perform an earthy, tactile task: kneading and baking bread, with the aroma wafting up from the ovens at the back of the stage. They share their thoughts on subjects like whom they would most want to give their bread to (a kind soul, a hungry child) and what life is all about. The opening tableau of the 11 bakers sitting at long tables evolves into a meticulously timed succession of scenes and sketches, some comic and bordering on burlesque, like an imaginary visit to a celebrity hairdresser, and others that are more realistic and heart-rending.

The story of how Nalagaat came to be is one of serendipity, born of an encounter between a group of disabled adults and a theater director who professes to have little patience and even less sense of pity. Adina Tal is the president and artistic director of Nalagaat. She is not interested at first to do a workshop for disabled people but building on the actors’ senses of taste, smell, and touch she explored the binding experience of preparing food. She had the troupe make salads and other basics, and the activity crystallized into the exercise of baking bread. For “Not by Bread Alone” Ms. Tal also devised the method of using drumbeats as punctuation between scenes. After six months the performers had learned to feel and respond to the vibrations, giving them a new link to the seeing and hearing world. “You come to see them, but through them you see yourselves,” Ms. Tal said. “To me that is art.”