As part of my course Applied Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama, I’ve seen a lot of theatre lately. I’m not referring to the mainstream classical theatre presented by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre or the National Theatre. No, I’ve been visiting local (community) theatres, where different organizations from the field of applied theatre performed engaging, participatory theatre.

One of the shows had me – and the audience! –  dancing, singing and rocking on our chairs. It was a wonderful night: energetic, lively and full of anarchy and Rock ‘n Roll. It was called “Reasons to be Cheerful” performed by Graeae Theatre Company.

What is Graeae Theatre Company and their work like?

In order to get a good impression of the musical “Reasons to be Cheerful” please do watch this short movie;

“Out there they say disabled people can’t act, disabled people can’t do that, blablabla… Hello!! We are SO out there!”

Graeae is,

“a disabled-led theatre company that profiles the skills of actors, writers and directors with physical and sensory impairments.  The artistic approach creates aesthetically accessible productions that include a disabled and non-disabled audience” (source: website Graeae).

Theatre and the disabled in the Netherlands

An excellent aspect of Reasons to be Cheerful is that all the actors in the musical – abled or disabled – were professionally trained, something I’d never seen before in theatre. Compared to performing and watching theatre in the Netherlands I must say that:

• In the Netherlands, you don’t get accepted at mainstream theatre departments of Arts schools if you are disabled in any kind. For example, the website of the Utrecht School of the Arts, department of Theatre states that,

“If you’re not capable to meet our high demands in both physical as mental capacities, you won’t get accepted in the Bachelor of Theatre in Acting, Bachelor of Theatre in Theatre and Education and Bachelor of Education in Theatre” (Source: website of the Utrecht School of the Arts).

• In the Netherlands, you don’t have any facilitation for disabled people to access theatres. For example, I’ve never before seen the script with the text of the scenes projected; there are no blind or deaf interpreters available in the theatres (here I must refer to the excellent performance by Jude Mahon – signing – and Wayne ‘Pickles’ Norman – describing – in Reasons to be Cheerful) and you don’t get asked for any special access-needs when booking a ticket. Recently, the most well-known theatre venue of Amsterdam, de Stadschouwburg Amsterdam, announced proudly that they’ve started subtitling some plays. In English, to make them accessible for expats.

All this made me wonder: Why are disabled people ignored like this in theatre? Does sitting in a wheelchair mean you can’t be a professional musician or actor? Does it mean you can’t enjoy theatre – both performing and watching it – when you are wheel chaired, blind or deaf? And moreover:  who are we, ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ people, to decide for others, the ‘ disabled’ what they can and cannot do (and enjoy)?

Sharon Grady about disability

An interesting author in this field is Sharon Grady (2000). In her book, called “Drama and Diversity”, she quotes the scholar Leonard Davis stating:

“An understanding of disability (…) is measured against what is considered ‘normal’. Normalcy is constructed to create the ‘problem’ of the disabled person” (Grady 2000: 129).

According to Grady, we live in a world of norms. “The world is structured for people who have no weaknesses” (2000:131). Thinking about this over the past few weeks I realised that the bottom-line is that we fear others, otherness, and especially the other’s weaknesses. This is something we see trending now in political climates in both the UK as continental Europe – but let’s not get too much into politics here, since that is a completely different debate in itself.

Creating theatre more open to the disabled

So what can we do about it? Here are some suggestions:

• Confrontation and getting to know disabilities helps. Grady:
  “Many people with no known disabilities feel awkwardness when confronted with the unfamiliar. Since ability is often not openly discussed, young people (and adults) have little knowledge about disabilities. They also often lack role models to provide examples of how to interact with people with disabilities or even how to begin discussing disabilities” (2000: 135).
• In Reasons to be Cheerful we as an audience were confronted right from the start with the different handicaps of the performers of the show. This started even before the play had begun: a girl with one arm walked around the audience welcoming everybody. After 3 hours of seeing her rocking, dancing and singing, I had completely forgotten about her handicap. I only saw her passion for music and her rather sexy dance moves…
• In this confrontation humour helps a lot. Laughing about who you are and what your world is like makes it a lot more approachable and understandable. In Reasons to be Cheerful, one of the lead actors falls asleep in the scene, and the other actors laugh about the fact that it is impossible to wake him up once he falls asleep (he’s deaf in real life). When he finally does wake up (but not as a response to the shouting of the other actors) the scene get’s hilarious and you start appreciating the deaf actor even more.
• While playing music, dancing and rocking together, you find out we, abled and disabled people, might have a lot of differences and misunderstandings between us, but at some points we are all alike: we, human beings in general, just loooooove to party! Grovin’ baby!

To conclude: my reason to be cheerful!

Thinking about all the above, I realized it’s actually all about a discourse, a way we define disability in our current society. Here, there’s a clear overlap with the way gender, cultural diversity and sexual orientation is discoursed. With “discoursing” I mean there is a language around disabilities (i.e. gender, cultural diversity, sexual orientation) that constructs it’s meaning. (read for more theory about this authors such as Judith Butler, Donna Haraway and Foucault). Grady explains the role of theatre in this,

“ As educators and theatre makers we can help transform the language of disability into a language of possibility as we rethink our practice and pedagogy through our awareness of what people are able to accomplish instead of what they ‘lack’ ” (2000:130).

Wow! That’s a big burden on my shoulders!

But I like it. I like thinking in possibilities of people. And I’m here to give others – any kind of others – access to all that theatre has offered me throughout my life. That for me is my reason to be cheerful! What’s yours?

References

• Grady, S. (2002) “Drama and Diversity.” Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.

Videos from Vimeo and Youtube, Photo by Rockinpaddy on Flickr