No wonder my spine cries
Photo by Leila Romoya for the 'Profile Project' (featured in Dada-Fest 2006).
Alternative Dramaturgies informed by a Deaf and Disability perspective
Alicia Grace reviews a symposium which took place at Liverpool Hope University in November 2006
Alternative Dramaturgies: the term spawned by playwright Kaite O'Reilly, describing performance work informed by a d/Deaf and Disability perspective, took its second leap into symposia at Liverpool Hope University on November 6th 2006. To conclude her research fellowship on Alternative Dramaturgies Kaite O'Reilly teamed up with NWDAF to curate an assemblage of performance practitioners who use Disability not only as a theme for political content, but use it also to reinvent our working methods, processes and products.
Having attended the first Alternative Dramaturgies symposium in March 2006 as a panel member, I was delighted to be asked to return in this role to the sister symposium in Liverpool. For me it was a fantastic opportunity to deepen reflections on my own performance style which has been emerging as an alternative dramaturgy since discovering the potential in rejecting the many disabling factors in the conventions of theatre practice.
International Disability performance scholar and maker, Petra Kuppers delivered the keynote, first engaging us with a gentle stretch, then introducing us to the range of issues which effect Disability performance and its praxis.
In discussing her new piece of work, based on the myth of Tiresias (the blind prophet, leaning on a staff), Kuppers shared her dramaturgy of disruption and transformation. She declared that we need to steal and transform culturally embedded misinterpretations of impairment and deposit new references on to characters such as Tiresias - performing them with our own bodies, re-writing them with our own experiences. With the Olimpias performance project, Kuppers' poetic excavations of personal experience are used to subvert the mythic liberties taken on impairment, as in the original tale of Tiresias, where impairment is exchanged for compensatory power.
She reminded us that contemporary artists often reclaim narratives in order to move culture forward - and that this was what Disabled artists needed to do in order to move beyond Pride. In the Olimpias revision of Tiresias the performers use their walking canes with percussive power, not excusing the presence of their aid, instead giving it a resonant power. This is a precise example of how Kuppers' dramaturgy disrupts the mainstream's efficacious use of impairment as metaphorical appendage. Kuppers describes the shifting of the meaning of Disability as mobile semiotics. She reminded us that whilst embodiment does carry meaning, that we do not need positive images; instead, we need depth, heft and presence.
Continuing on the theme of redefining images, the formidable Mat Fraser took us on a whistle stop tour of the marketing strategies he has developed since embarking on his career as an actor and writer. Though not strictly focussing on the dramaturgical aspects of his work, he argued that marketing approaches were a crucial part of the creation of Disability performance. Given Fraser's strong entertainment ethos and mainstream aspirations this was a convincing argument and a fascinating deconstruction of images ensued. The defining characteristic of Fraser's dramaturgy could be summarised as an appropriation of existing theatrical form. He has done this both by reclaiming the freak show in his solo performance SealBoy Freak, and reclaiming the genre of musical theatre in his recent production Thalidomide! The Musical. His unrelenting entertainment ethos, does not however fall short of subversion, “you've got to get the audience in first, then give them the hard stuff”. In Thalidomide! The Musical, Fraser allows the audience to holler the word spaz, but later in the show uses it within the script, at which point the audience has developed empathy with the character and no longer sees the word as laughable. This element of Fraser's dramaturgy could be described as tactical gratification and is definitive to a performer who has developed an essential dramaturgy against the backdrop of the Disabling attitudes of the Theatre and television industries.
In the absence of Kaite O'Reilly and Jean St Clair, the work of the Fingersmiths Limited was presented by DVD and by live presentation from Jeni Draper. Both presentations gave fascinating insight to the complex toolbox of the bilingual aesthetic used by the company.
Draper described how Jean St Clair's visual projection of script is rooted in BSL but then theatricalised - this style is referred to as the Visual Vernacular (or V V). Though mime like in appearance it is distinguished from mime in that it is rooted in BSL and can only be learnt by BSL users. When creating a V V script for current work In Praise of Fallen Women, the company had to invent new signs for the various terms for prostitution, “when you don't know the sign, go for the meaning”, Draper explained. In fact the whole notion of script has been reconsidered in the work of the Fingersmiths, O'Reilly stating that in places the script looks more like dance notation and that there is no proper script.
Inclusive practice and cultural identity
last updated: 2007-02-01 00:00:00
tags : accessibility theatre review