TEL AVIV — Next time you’re alone in a dark, quiet room, shut your eyes. Block out all sound.

For the deaf and blind performers of Nalagaat, an acclaimed Israeli theater ensemble, the impregnable darkness and silence is 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 on Wednesday, brush strokes of raw memories, fantastical journeys, pantomime sketches and fleeting but indelible snippets of dreams add up to a theatrical happening that draws the audience into the performers’ world.

The actors of Nalagaat (the name is 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.