What inspired you to create this work around the themes of “witches” and “maids”?
Both : A visit to the Pharmacy Museum at the University of Basel in Switzerland sparked a simple but unsettling question: where are the women in the history of medicine?
From there, we were led to the Middle Bridge, where a plaque commemorates the women and men who were accused of witchcraft and persecuted. This encounter opened the door to a deeper exploration of European witch-hunting history, where we learned that the so-called “last witch” executed in Europe was beheaded as late as 1782. Her name was Anna Göldi, a Swiss housemaid accused of witchcraft by her male employer.
Coming from the Philippines and Sri Lanka—countries that continue to export domestic labor to the Global North—we found ourselves drawn to the figures of the witch and the maid, and how their histories remain entangled with present realities.
We subsequently also came across a newspaper article titled ‘Is your Sri Lankan a Filipina?’ where the word Sri Lankan was used to mean ‘housemaid’, and this prompted further exploration.
In Silvia Federici’s work, witch-hunting is understood as part of the historical subjugation of women: a mechanism used to suppress indigenous knowledge systems and enforce new forms of social and economic control. It functioned as a tool that enabled emerging systems of exploitation, profiting from the labor of women and colonized peoples. Accusations of witchcraft, in different forms, continue to be used today.
Domestic workers were being persecuted in certain parts of the world. We use the broom, which connects the popular image of the witch and the house maid. It becomes an extension of our bodies that transform from the domestic, mechanical, to the sensual, finally reclaiming a wildness. In the work we are metaphorically sweeping out into the surface things that should not have been swept under.
What kind of research did you conduct for this piece, particularly regarding care workers from Southeast Asia who work abroad? How did you develop that research into the performance?
Eisa: From the initial idea seeding in 2022 in Kaserne Basel, we had a year of conceptual development and research where we have gathered news reports and watched documentaries on domestic migrant workers sourced from the internet. This research grounded the initial idea with contemporary facts; tracing the global chain of care work with a focus on the continuation of the social function and power relations of ‘Magic’ both in the oppression and empowerment of domestic work.
On our first creation residency, where the physical foundation language of broomology already emerged, the task of anchoring the work that spans from European witch hunt to its direct consequences in modern day domestic labor was a big challenge. From Silvia Federici ‘Caliban and the Witch’; she elaborated on ‘gossip’ as another technology of suppression turning a mode of communication and passing of vital information between women into a social stigma. The etymology of the word gossip comes from old English literally “god-sibling,” referring to a godparent or a sponsor who had a spiritual kinship to the child. Gossip became a section in our work that could articulate our news and archive research and focus on actual recorded instances of domestic labor abuse including witch accusations from Europe to Filipino Urban legends in the present.
In the latter half of our creation process in the Philippines, we met with Balabal Organization a non-profit organization providing support for women migrant workers and their families who experienced violence, trauma, human-trafficking, and illegal recruitment. They shared with us their heartbreaking personal experiences of working abroad and how this has informed their organization’s advocacy. Meeting them and listening to their stories made the work all the more urgent.
Through our research creation, our bodies have become repositories of domestic workers stories that we’ve read, watched and listened to. Wild dancing became a necessary exercise in our process to purge and keep our sanity to continue the work.
This work has toured internationally—what kinds of responses have you received when performing it in other countries?
Venuri: We have been fortunate to perform for many different audiences and each context reveals something new. What feels most important to us is the moment when the audience becomes implicated in the work — when they recognize themselves within it.
What becomes especially interesting is when audiences are heterogeneous and visibly respond in different ways. In mixed audiences especially, we can clearly sense contrasting reactions: one group uncomfortable, another deeply engaged and excited. Those tensions are not separate from the work; they are part of what the work exposes.
In South Africa, for example, it was clear that black South African audiences were responding very differently from white South African audiences. At times, they were watching each other as much as they were watching us, and that dynamic became part of the performance itself.
During one performance in Lausanne, a Filipina dancer brought her mother, who had come to Switzerland as a domestic worker, creating a deeply personal layer of reception.
In other places, we have met people who identify with entirely different parts of the work — descendants of women accused of witchcraft, or audience members who only later approach us to share personal stories or confessions of having domestic workers.
Work-in-progress sharings with audiences across different contexts were crucial to developing the piece.
Residencies in Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and elsewhere allowed us to gather feedback from communities where domestic labor is lived reality in different ways.
In Amsterdam, we encountered both a European art audience and an Asian diaspora audience responding differently — one suggesting we should tone the work down, while the other insisting we should go even wilder.
We’ve had interesting reactions from people who assume we are speaking for domestic workers, while no one seems troubled by the idea that we might be speaking from the position of the witch. We are very clear about our position: as artists, we shapeshift. We move between the witch, the madam, the maid, and wild animals, calling on these figures as narrative and symbolic bodies through which stories can be told. We are not speaking FOR domestic workers; rather, we are visibilizing the invisible / overlooked / ignored, speaking about the systems that produce and sustain these conditions — systems to which we are all complicit and connected. We are quite deliberate in what we want to say, why we say it, and how we choose this approach. The range of reactions we receive reflects the different social positions people bring into the space.
Everywhere we travel, we also observe who is working behind the scenes: who cleans the hotels we stay in, who maintains the theatres and stages. Again and again, it is migrant labor, often performed by women. These observations continually feed back into the work.
The more we share the work, the more it reinforces our belief in its urgency.
Message from Artists
I am curious how our performance will attune to the context of Japan, and what kinds of disruptions it might propose. What will be swept out into the open? What will resist being revealed? Which audiences will resonate with the work, and which might reject or dismiss it? All are welcome—I look forward to both the gifts and the challenges of performing Magic Maids in Shizuoka. —Eisa Jocson
I am excited to return to Shizuoka as I was last there before the pandemic, creating and performing ‘Multitudes of Peer Gynts’ with the SPAC including the wonderful Micari san. During my longterm collaboration with Natsuko Tezuka san I had the privilege of experiencing and witnessing folk rituals and learnt about Japan’s strong history of shamanism. I am curious how the audience would resonate with our ritual dramaturgy. I am sure that they will be able to relate to the violence against women’s bodies which is insidious and everywhere, and would be able to resonate with the need for a wild feminine rebellion. —Venuri Perera
Eisa Jocson
Eisa Jocson is an interdisciplinary artist based in La Union, Philippines. Trained as a visual artist with a background in ballet, she came to contemporary dance through pole dancing. In her works, she explores body politics in the service and entertainment industry as seen through the socioeconomic lens of the Philippines. She studies how the body moves and what conditions make it move – be it social mobility or movement out of the Philippines through migrant work. In her creations, from ‘Death of the Pole Dancer’ to ‘Macho Dancer’ to ‘Host’ to ‘Princess’ to ‘Superwoman Band’ and ‘Manila Zoo’ – capital is the driving force of movement pushing the indentured body into ‘developed’ geographies. She regularly presents her pieces at renowned theatres and international festivals in Asia and Europe, such as Tanz im August, TPAM Yokohama, Zürcher Theaterspektakel and Frankfurter Positionen. She is a recipient of the 2018 Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Award, the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award 2019, the SeMa-HANA Award 2021 and the Tabori Award International 2023.
Venuri Perera
Venuri Perera is an independent artist, curator and educator from Colombo. Exploring the power dynamics of visibility and opacity, she attempts to destabilize and disorient how we perceive the ‘other.’ Her solo and collaborative works deal with violent nationalism, patriarchy, immigration, colonial heritage, class, and have been invited to festivals/symposia across Europe, South and East Asia, Middle East and Africa since 2008. She has closely collaborated with choreographers Geumhyung Jeong (SK) (Theatre Spektakel / Monsoon Australia), Natsuko Tezuka (JP) (Kyoto Experiment / SIFA Singapore). Perera conceived and curated the projects of the Colombo Dance Platform (Goethe-Institut) and is a member of the Dance Panel of the Arts Council in Sri Lanka. A graduate of DAS Theatre, she is currently based between Amsterdam and Colombo.
