In a Costa Coffee in a market town on the border of Wales, I listened to Sarah speak about her son, Elliot. ‘I’m sure I know a very different Elliot to you’, she said immediately as we sat down, repeating this refrain a number of times throughout our conversation. It was my fourth week working at About Face- a theatre company for adults with learning disabilities, encompassing various intellectual or cognitive impairments – and I had yet to realise the significance in her choice of words. Over the next hour, me and Sarah would unpack the respective Elliots we knew, piecing together the separate parts that we’d both met; to her, the boy she’d loved and raised, and to me, the actor and puppeteer.
‘The theatre gives him a place to be somebody’, she went on, a fact she expressed deep gratitude for, even if this ‘somebody’ was not someone she necessarily felt she had met. In that moment, I briefly considered my own divided selves, thinking through the vast array of slightly different persons refracted in the eyes of all the people who know me; there are no two that are quite the same. My split and nuanced personhood was not something I had ever needed to consider at length, nor something I had necessarily felt grateful for. I feel, at least to some extent, I am able to choose my identity, and maintain a sense of self through cultivating and sustaining narratives about ‘who’ I am. But I am both able-bodied and neurotypical. How would the concept of my personhood change if I weren’t?
The relationship between disability and identity has been widely explored in scholarship. Whyman’s 2006 piece- Theatre and Learning Disability and the Idea of the Simpleton- articulates a fundamental paradox in the learning-disabled that, as will be explored later on, becomes challenged in the context of theatre. Those with learning disabilities are both ‘hypervisible in that he/she is instantly defined by their disability, yet often invisible as an active participant in social structures’. Through physical indicators- perhaps visually or through vocal queues- they are instantly bound to a fixed social identity of ‘disabled’, which runs the risk of losing nuance and becoming homogenised in public discourse. Indeed, one could go as far as to say this process is positively encouraged by political structures for the sake of ease; ‘society desires that a person with a disability fit into societal structures’, writes Murugami in Disability and Identity, ‘rather than structures fitting into the person’s with disability needs.’ Yet, despite this hypervisibility, they are also largely obscured from social and political realms, relegated to designated centres and spaces, often ‘spoken for’ or ‘given a voice’ if they are to participate in the public arena. The space in which this positions them is difficult to navigate; visible enough to have a narrative of identity fostered upon them, not visible enough to counter that narrative.
On the most basic level, About Face brings about a sense of ‘personhood’- a term that covers a sense of individual identity, a feeling of recognition or value- for each actor through the carefully crafted and considerate environment. The day to day of the company differs, but the focus is largely the same; singing or a physical warm-up, followed by a rehearsal on the creative project they are currently pursuing. Some days we walk to the park to play rounders, other days we play drama games or devise an improv piece. The direction of the day is both full of purpose and spontaneous, with a largely equal division between work on an upcoming performance piece and more relaxed creative activities.
Critically, each individual is treated as utterly distinct from another, as the directors work tirelessly to comprehend the likes, the dislikes, the strengths and the weaknesses of each person, and then attempt to construct each day in light of this knowledge. There is a constant discourse between the interests of the actors and the creative vision of the directors, both of which inform the other; ideas are constantly floated, picked up and ran with, dropped or transformed. Direct opinions are often difficult to glean from the actors themselves; much of the director’s work depends on the careful watching and inference of preferences through mood changes and enthusiasm. At the same time, once a creative project has been established, the directors assert a level of authority and encourage discipline in order to produce the high quality work for which they are known.
It is these two elements- the care and the professionalism- that seem to cultivate a sense of self for the actors. They are heard, sought to be understood, given parts that play to their strengths, while at the same time have the sense that they are part of something bigger, something with consequence. ‘Elliot’s a real… participant in society now’, Sarah remarked, looking to the middle distance over her coffee to find the right word. ‘There are real expectations of him. As an actor, a performer’. The actors are able to move beyond the hypervisibility paradox; they are treated as far more than a singular, homogenised group, while at the same time given a distinct social role and purpose within the team and the wider community, for who they put on performances. Sarah recognises the huge benefits of this in the changes in Elliot’s behaviour – he has begun to take the train alone. Every now and again, he insists he takes her for a drink at their local pub.
Yet, there is also something more complex in the identities cultivated at About Face. The company often works closely with puppets in their performances, ranging from those that fit in the palm of one’s hand, to characters three feet tall, mobilised by walking in the shoes of the puppet itself. The creative director, Alice, works hard to incorporate puppetry wherever she can. ‘I think people see them more as – they become just… performers, and not “disabled performers” when they use puppets’, she remarked when questioned on the artistic choice. I took a moment to consider this; why was disability suddenly obscured by the presence of a puppet? And what did this mean for the identity of the actors?
Astels, in her piece Wood and Waterfall: Puppetry training and its anthropology, perhaps begins to offer us understanding. She claims that puppeteers seek to ‘create a sense of presence beyond their own bodies… [locating] their focus of expression outside the body, while keeping the source of energy within the body’. The implications of this exterior presence are vast. Here, it seems, the actors at About Face are able to break out of the predisposed ‘self’ of the learning-disabled person; by providing a separate form outside of themselves with which act through, the aforementioned hypervisibility of their disability begins to take a back seat, both despite of – and because of -the ‘hypervisibility’ of performing. In a sense, the physical presence of the actor themselves and the indicators of disability that go with it become almost irrelevant, as the main focus point of the piece is externalised upon the puppet.
And yet, it does not feel as though the aims of About Face are to minimise the disabled characteristics of the actors, and indeed, the aims of puppetry are not necessarily to totally externalise oneself. Instead, puppetry at the company is more of a collaborative process between the performer and the puppet; ‘puppeteers can develop a sense of themselves not as separate performing bodies’, writes Astels, ‘but as linked essentially to each other and matter within the performance’. This essential link between the person and the puppet means that, despite somewhat obscuring of the indicators of disability, the puppet is still deeply connected to and in conversation with the actor in a performance. They are inextricably related, and in that produce a different sort of identity- one that incorporates the disability of the actor into the performance as a strength.
‘We usually see acting as involving the actors getting rid of their own personal mannerisms in order to be ‘inhabited’ by the character’, writes Whyman, ‘whereas here the learning disabled actors’ habitual way of expressing themselves enhances the performance.’ In this, Whyman points to the strengths that the unique, unconcealable characteristics of the disabled actor can bring to a performance, producing an entirely different and exceptional experience for the viewer. The identity of the actor on stage is thus not divided or concealed, but instead a complex picture of both ‘performer’ and ‘disabled performer’, and this is certainly evident in the performances at About Face. Through their pieces, the centre facilitates a celebration of the individual, as well as a place to move beyond the confines of a static category of identity.
Actors are, by the very nature of their job, required to inhabit multiple selves. Through theatre, through puppetry, the actors at About Face are offered each day a multitude of selves to embody. They are given a space to move beyond the fixed identities that are enforced by regulatory regimes and embodied in cultural and societal prejudices; they are, crucially, not just encouraged to be themselves but to be different kinds of selves.
Written by Thea Arch
DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF COMPASS MAGAZINE AS A WHOLE OR THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY.