Xposure 2004 is the third annual month-long festival celebrating the diverse and imaginative world of deaf and disability arts. Venues are throughout London and specifically chosen for their accessibility, including: Croydon Clocktower, Oval House, Sadler’s Wells and Jacksons Lane, where the first London disability arts festival was held in 1998.
Currently in the UK, access to the arts for disabled people is easier than at any time in the past. Crucial sections of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) came into force on 1st October 2004, which places a duty on arts organisations as employers and providers of goods and services, to make reasonable adjustments to avoid discriminating against disabled people. In practical terms this has meant many public galleries, theatres etc. have made changes to their buildings, which allow for easy access to everyone. Wheelchairs are an obvious example and Jackson’s Lane theatre can accommodate up to 16 audience members using wheelchairs.
Xposure is a truly international festival; this year it includes the American storyteller Kevin Kling who will be telling THE FROZEN MOOSE and other stories in his inimitable style, ” somewhere between David Lynch’s perversity and Garrison Keillor’s home-spun humour” (Denver Post). Also on show in the comedy strand will be Philip Patson from New Zealand with his unique and laconic style. For dance fans, Corali, CandoCo and Stopgap are showcasing their innovative, integrated dance works.
Two of the oldest and best disability theatre companies, award-winners Graeae and Mind the Gap will be contributing to the theatre strand. Also on offer this year is Watch the Spider, a play that marks the writing debut of actor and dancer Andrew MacLay who has been paralysed from the waist down since a traffic accident in 1987. Philip Osment, himself a distinguished writer, is the director of Watch the Spider. They met whilst MacLay was a student of Graeae’s Missing Piece training course. Philip directed him in Woyzeck and again in Road where he says, ‘I recognised his power as a performer’. In the past Philip worked a lot with Gay Sweatshop and recognises that in the same way that it was important for Gay Sweatshop simply to exist – doing gay plays for a gay audience, it is just as important for theatre companies like Graeae and Mind the Gap to focus on using disabled performers and address issues that are relevant to them, he explains, ‘Sometimes you have to stand up as a group and get strength from that group identity so that you can say, we’re here and this is how we see the world. Traditionally disabled people have had to wait for able-bodied people to give them access (literally) to the stage…it’s great that there are disabled people out there taking control.’
I asked Philip Osment how he felt about the issue of integrated casting within mainstream theatre:
‘It can be rather token – an actor in a wheelchair in the Xmas panto getting wheeled around by one of the other characters. If the production is not challenging audience expectations of theatrical form, (i.e. what does ‘integrated signing’ mean for a production?) then this token-ism can result. When I see a production at the RSC that has one black performer I feel the same. You sense that somehow integrated casting isn’t really being addressed.’
Philip has taught and directed as part of the Graeae training courses and I also asked him what it was that appealed to him and challenged him as a director when working with a disabled cast:
‘It makes you rethink how stories have to be told on stage and challenges assumptions about what skills an actor needs to have. We become more aware of the essence of the character somehow and aware that we are watching a play being performed by actors who are pretending to be other than they are. [I directed] Woyzeck and Blood Wedding – both productions owed their innovatory quality and theatricality to the fact that they were performed by a cast of disabled performers. For instance the character of Woyzeck was played by a profoundly deaf actor who signed and the other performers voiced his lines which harmonised with his sense of being out of control and hearing voices. The powerful figure of the Mother in Blood Wedding was played by a wonderful actress who was relatively short and this heightened the sense of her brooding desire for revenge. Does the person playing Maria in Woyzeck need to be able to walk? No. How does the fact that she is played by someone in a wheelchair change our perception of the play? What makes Maria who she is? Is it her body and what we see or is it how she behaves?’
Interestingly, surveys around disability access usually reveal that it is people’s attitude which is the biggest barrier faced by disabled people on a daily basis. Attitudes are hard to legislate for and slow to change but the 1995 DDA was far reaching in its policies to combat discrimination against disabled people in many social areas and has done much to encourage a climate of change in public perceptions of disability. The press and media are much less negatively prejudiced towards disability – however the ‘gutter’ press still has an unsavory habit of referring to sufferers of mental illness as ‘nutters’.
Campaign groups such as RADAR (Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation) are now pushing for policy improvements to grant full civil rights to disabled people with the draft Disability Bill. Kate Nash, director of RADAR says:
‘Let us not lose sight of how much more needs to be done before disabled people share the same basic dignities as most of the population. Half of us have incomes below the poverty line. We can’t all get on buses and trains; we don’t all get the level of service we need in bars, cinemas and shops. [let’s] push for legislation that doesn’t just talk of human rights but delivers them.’
Changing outdated attitudes is where the work of festivals like Xposure and the many wonderful artists and creative companies that contribute to it, can really help through the uncompromising and challenging work that they achieve. Just as important though is that they are simply getting on with being creative and boldly strutting their stuff.
To find out more about the events and performances at Xposure this year and about disability arts in general see:
www.xposurefestival.com
www.disabilityarts.org
www.artsaccessUK.org
www.radar.org.uk
Hollywood Ending
It’s 2005. Picture the scene: we’re in an office somewhere in the UK. The two senior colleagues in the organisation are poring over an old disability policy document. It could be in a company or local authority, or even within a government department.
‘Disability discrimination?’ asks one, manoeuvring his wheelchair a little closer to the coffee machine. ‘What’s that?’
‘Just something they used to have in the twentieth century,’ says his colleague.
(Taken from ‘The Seven-Year Itch’ – Radar document, co-ordinated by Margaret Lavery)
