god forbid

God Forbid is an autobiographic performance work by Dana Ruttenberg and Noa Mark-Ofer, performed by Noa.

The performance is based on Noa Mark-Ofer’s true story. Apart from being a dancer, a curator and a juggler of many other roles, Noa is also a mother that one day learned that her baby son is very sick. Noa's appearence can be a "deceptive". Upon meeting her, you can't help but ask yourself if she is what you had in mind when you thought of a "mother of a sick child". What DID you have in mind, by the way?

This is the unexpected natureof God Forbid. It travels through scenes taken from her particular experience, situations taken out of context and "re-planted" into familiar yet surprising worlds. An interview with a special-needs nanny becomes an impassioned TED talk, while the process of preparing medication for her son fast becomes a TV reality cooking show. Humor and irony spice each of the scenes because, as the song goes, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

During the performance, the audience are invited to participate in different ways and become an inseparable part of Noa’s world. They are the doctor sitting across the table, they are her son and daughter, and at times they even become Noa herself. The performance space becomes a topographical and psychological map of her cosmos comprising obstacle courses, medical corridors, physical rooms and inner chambers of the heart that. In a new language full of words that are unpronounceable (she is already an expert, we are still novices), a treasure trove of human explosives is revealed. This is an autobiographical strip-tease. Flirtatious, exposing, inviting, empowering, exhausting. 

 And it is everything you didn't expect to encounter. Or want to.