In Dutch, the word “geschapen” mean something created by the force or action of something or someone else: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The word schapen means simply “sheep.” Lately, I’m wondering how sheep came to be involved in the first place. Could sheep help us understand what is at the root of all creation? Van Gaubergen relishes the gaps between words and their meanings. He cites the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who once wrote, “everything f lows, nothing stays.” Taking the river as a metaphor for the continual f lux of language, Van Gaubergen asks: What if the rivers dried up and water flow came to a halt? What would become of “nothing stays”? What if there were no more clouds to feed the streams, no more mountain caps to melt snow into riverbeds? As it happens, language is also, always, a matter of context. “Probably the highest mountain (conditions) on Earth” draws from what Van Gaubergen deems the “ultimate” set design: the ability to speculate climate and its extremes within a theater. The play’s script cites a promotional video for a car manufacturer’s environmental testing facility in Cologne, Germany. With purported “altitudes higher than Mont Blanc,” the center boasts “all the world’s weather under one roof ” to test its vehicles. Van Gaubergen’s performance suggests how shifts in language could engender new realities. Suddenly, the tallest mountain in Western Europe is no longer a question of height but a set of atmospheric conditions.
Text: Amanda Sarroff
