New book shines light on disability theatre

PĀNUI PĀPĀHO MEDIA RELEASE: Ara Institute

22 January 2019
Fifteen years of work in disability performance, which has put Christchurch at the forefront of research and practice in a growing global movement, has culminated in the publication of a new book for Ara Institute theatre tutor Dr Tony McCaffrey.

McCaffrey established the company A Different Light, an ensemble of performers with intellectual disabilities, in 2004 and has since contributed to an international network that is challenging assumptions about theatre, about disability and about what it means to be an inclusive society.

Dr Tony McCaffrey with his new book “Writing the book was to really acknowledge the contribution that actors with intellectual disabilities are making to contemporary culture on a global basis,” McCaffrey says.

“It is a form of theatre whose time has come. After 50 years of institutional and therapeutic origins, disability theatre has entered the mainstream, and a network of innovative companies has emerged globally with one of the centres here in Christchurch.”

McCaffrey’s book, Incapacity and Theatricality: Politics and Aesthetics in Theatre Involving Actors with Intellectual Disabilities, is published by Routledge and offers a recent history of key global theatrical performances across different media involving performers with intellectual disabilities.

Attitudes are changing

From the 1963 Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster film, A Child is Waiting, featuring young actors with intellectual disabilities, to McCaffrey’s own work with A Different Light, the book shows how attitudes are changing.

“I think there is quite a lot of interest in the involvement of people with intellectual disabilities in performance. Last year a performer with cerebral palsy, the Lost Voice Guy, Lee Ridley, won the TV show Britain’s Got Talent. One of the actors I work with in A Different Light just auditioned for a New Zealand film called Poppy, directed by Miranda Harcourt, which is about a young woman with Down syndrome.”

McCaffrey also talks about “the disability that is to come” as the population ages: dementia, for example. “We have to make a decision as a society, either we look after people and help them to communicate with us – or we don’t. That is the choice and obviously I am on the side of talking, working with and engaging people who have whatever incapacity they have in their lives, but often that incapacity can open up tremendous new possibilities of what can be done.”

The examples in the book show that apparent limitations can create exiting new creative possibilities.

Shining a light on disability

McCaffrey continues to present at global conferences, work with leading academics/practitioners and contribute to distinguished academic journals. His work shines a light on many grey areas of disability theatre, beyond simply having opportunities to perform, to leadership and agency. Who devises the work? Who runs the company? What sort of support is required?

“The performers from A Different Light are very articulate,” McCaffrey says. “They have spoken at academic conferences, they make theatre and they devise the scripts. A Different Light in Christchurch, Mind the Gap in England, Back to Back Theatre in Australia are avant-garde theatre companies that we can now say just happen to have performers with intellectual disabilities in them.”

McCaffrey also contributed the chapter called Institution, care, and emancipation in contemporary theatre involving actors with intellectual disabilities in the new book The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture and Media (edited by Bree Hadley and Donna McDonald).

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