Disabled Theater

Disabled Theater

Tramway, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

WHEN the Zurich-based Theater HORA invited Jerome Bel to work on a new company piece in 2012, they knew the choreographer would probably incur hostility and recrimination as well as praise from the audiences who watched Disabled Theater.

The award-winning Bel had no previous experience of working with adults who have learning difficulties, so he took a path familiar to his own practice: he gave the participants a series of questions and tasks that ranged from coming on stage, one after another, to stand silently for a minute through to devising a piece of their own dance. Even on paper, this suggests a mix of confrontation and exposure where it is (deliberately) not clear who or what is being confronted or exposed.

Long before the end, my feeling was that we, the audience, were the ones being challenged - not least because all those on stage had declared their profession was "actor".

Each one had approached the microphone, given us their name, age and mental disability - Down's syndrome, autism, "being slow" - sometimes with a forthright comment, before sitting in the semi-circle of chairs.

Were they being themselves, or maybe performing "as themselves"? What was it we thought we were seeing? Was it the freak show one performer's mother had described it as, even though she liked it? Or was it a statement of personal identity and expressive flair by people whom society tends to marginalise or niche in terms of what we assume they can't do?

If the piece is grounded in honesty and frankness, it also teases and plays with knowingly mischievous humour - Remo Beuggert's rock "duet" with a chair was a classy case in point. Thought-provoking? Remarkably and memorably so.