Past work I want to develop further….
As said before I want to do a solo performance about becoming disabled/my disability using physical theatre. The idea to do this came from a past piece of work that I, and my group, devised. What I want to do is to use this performance and develop it into a solo piece. I also plan to perhaps use monologues and perhaps projection as well as I feel that this might be the best way to tell the story I want to tell. The thing I really loved about this past piece is that it really shows what I can do, physically and that physical theatre is a performance style that allows me to move in and out of my chair. My wheelchair is also like another performer. It has it’s own presence, it’s own energy and it’s a quite a powerful object because of it’s, generally speaking, negative connotations. Wheelchairs are generally associated to illness and tragedy so I think by using the chair in ways it’s not designed for perhaps makes people realise that at the end of the day, it’s just a chair. The person who uses the wheelchair and the wheelchair become separate. I think the image of the empty chair also has some interesting emotion to it. There is a section in this piece where all the performers are just looking at the wheelchair and there’s this pause. This pause feels tense, for us as performers it’s because we know that the next section is the longest and most important so the others are waiting for me to start the section and for the audience they are waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to either move the chair or to get in it, for the owner of the chair has not been established. It may be obvious because I have walked with crutches and used the chair briefly in one of the earlier sections but I have not sat in it. I have not actually made it explicitly clear that it is my chair. So I feel that an empty wheelchair is a very dynamic imagine that I want to use, perhaps at the start of my piece. I might try experimenting with the start of the show, maybe start with the chair empty so that audiences focus is the chair to begin with not the performer. There is a lot of things that I can test and play with in terms of the wheelchair. Despite the fact that my wheelchair, in a sense, is the biggest obstacle perhaps in my everyday life, on stage it is actually freeing and interesting things to work with as there is so much that I can actually use it for.
I have also done a solo movement piece before, when I was in college and had only just become disabled. In this piece I have limited movement compared to the video above because I had not the strength or ability to move much at that time. This video is also from a rehearsal of the piece so it was not as ‘polished’ as it was in the final show.
So I went to see the movie The Greatest Showman…wasn’t overly impressed but it gave my some things to think about for my solo performance…
The reason why I was not a fan of the film was because it romanticised the idea of “freak shows” and it implied that the only place someone who is disabled or different can “feel at home” is in a circus, however this also made me think about my solo performance and whether I should try and relate it almost back to this freak show/ circus idea. One of the first thoughts the film gave me was whether I should maybe stage the show in the round. Circuses are set in the round so I thought, when I actually start the rehearsal process, I might experiment with staging my audience in this setting. The reason I want to test this idea is because I want to do my performance about my disability and my experience of changing from abled-bodied to disabled, and the thing that has changed the most since losing my ability to walk is the fact that I get stared at and made to feel like a “freak”. Placing the show in the round, or if not this but in somehow relating the show back to the idea of a freak show, I hope to perhaps make people a bit uncomfortable. I do want to use physical theatre for my piece so staging in the round might not be possible , however I really like the idea of somehow linking back to freak shows, even if it’s just via a monologue or through costume. I think, this is just ideas at the moment, that maybe if I try to set up the feeling of a freak show then strip it back to my story, the reality of being disabled not some sob-story or “inspiring” circus act, that might be affective. Reinforcing the idea, maybe, that I’m not some circus act rather I’m just a human being. Another thing that Greatest Showman made me realise was that only disabled audience members found the show offensive. There was a complete perspective difference from the disabled community and disabled critics to the abled-bodied critics. Abled-bodied audience members have raved about the film and make out that its some inspiring story about a “normal” man giving some “different” people a place to express themselves without realising the truth behind it. The real life P.T. Barnum popularized the idea of freak shows in America. Or , in more cynical terms, he helped make the dehumanization of disabled people as a form of entertainment popular. He also bought and sold slaves and people with disabilities and then showcased them in museums and circuses. Yet the movie makes out that he was some great friend to the disabled community. Again this began to give me some ideas for solo performance. This idea of dehumanization. The idea that as a disabled person I am less than human, or at least am considered that way by some. I begun to taught maybe I could do something with this idea, like perhaps telling my story and then quickly switching into a another character to talk about it from an outside put of view. The ringleader outfit caught my attention so I thought that maybe this other character could be dressed as a ringleader, to link back to the idea of freak shows. At the moment everything is just ideas, want I now need to start doing is physically rehearsing and testing out these ideas.
