Posts tagged theatre
Access All Areas: putting disability centre stage
Raimund Hoghe’s Throwing the Body into Flight provided the title for one of the sessions at Lada's Access All Areas symposium. Photograph: Rosa Frank
It’s the art and artists who tend to be marginalised at so many conferences, but on Saturday they took centre stage at Access All Areas, a symposium created by the Live Art Development Agency (Lada). The two-day programme examined disability and how live art lies at the forefront of disability art practice, thinking and theory. Maybe it’s because disability itself is so marginalised in mainstream culture (as indeed is access to art by the disabled) that Lada was so stringent about refusing to divorce theory from practice, talking from doing. Live art has always been about breaking the rules, so it’s particularly well positioned as a platform for disabled practitioners.
So many symposia simply invite talking heads to deliver papers that you might just as well have read in the comfort of your own home. Not here. In many cases, such as Kim Noble’s account of his depression (including the making of a new Pret sandwich featuring “ham, anti-depressants and mayo”), the Disabled Avant-Garde’s response to the word “sick”, and Sean Burn’s reclamation of the language of lunacy featuring a “nutcase”, marbles and several walnuts, the presentations became performance. Never for a moment during discussion could you forget what was being talked about.
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Access All Areas: putting disability centre stage
Reasons To Be Cheerful
Leading disability-led theatre company Graeae marked its 30th anniversary with a populist, but spirited musical featuring the songs of the late Ian Dury. Able magazine was invited behind the scenes.
WORDS: PAUL F COCKBURN.
1979: it’s a time of change, and disabled people in Britain are feeling increasingly excluded and threatened by the talk of cuts to benefits and public services that’s coming from the new Conservative Government.
2010: it’s a time of change, and disabled people in Britain are feeling increasingly excluded and threatened by the talk of cuts to benefits and public services that’s coming from the new Conservative-led Coalition Government….
Oh dear. Ever get the sense that we’ve been here before? (more…)
Arts: Theatre for Everyone
The National Theatre aims to serve everyone it can – and that includes providing access behind the scenes, according to Jennifer Reynolds.
Each year the National Theatre on London’s South Bank welcomes more than 750,000 visitors through its doors. The building – home to the Olivier, Lyttelton and Cottesloe theatres – presents an eclectic mix of new plays and classics from around the world, with seven or eight productions in repertory at any one time. (more…)
