Els van Houtert Necessarium

Necessarium is about the small rituals that are an important part of our everyday life. The daily routines we perform so often without thinking about them. We develop relationships with ordinary objects, spaces, and habits. They may seem simple, but they can carry memories, desires, and personal stories. This solo performance turns the bathroom as the most private of rooms into a site of ritual, touch and transformation. It examines layers of meaning in the bathroom, reflecting on the question: How do we become ourselves when we are alone?

You and I share an intimate companionship: we sing to each other, reflect one another, you embrace the fluids I release, and I embrace your cold, smooth surfaces. Inside you, I think I see myself. What I show you is what I dare to unveil. I present you my future, my past, my queen. You gently disentangle my hair. What do you see?

Necessarium explores the small rituals and routines we repeat so often that they quietly structure everyday life, while remaining almost invisible. Through repetition, we develop intimate relationships with ordinary objects and spaces. What appears mundane, can reflect memories, fantasies, and realities. It opens up an existential space in which questions of identity, desire and self-image make us quietly negotiate: Who do we wish to be, what are we willing to reveal, and, perhaps more importantly, what do we want to conceal?

The solo performance turns the bathroom – that probably most private of rooms – into a site of ritual and transformation. It seems to be one of the few places where intimacy can unfold without witnesses or expectations. Els van Houtert brings this deeply personal subject to the stage. The project negotiates intimacy in the presence of others, exploring how we are shaped through dynamics of revealing and concealing. Within this field of tension, she asks: How do we become ourselves when we are alone? What does the bathroom know about us, that the rest of the world does not?