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Like any art, writing and performing are built on the premise of compelling as well as demanding attention. Demanding attention is easy. Throwing a tantrum in a public space is one way of demanding attention. But often that attention is short lived (it lasts as long as the tantrum does) or ineffective (it is being heeded only as an annoyance). Compelling attention, on the other hand, implies that the listener has as much at stake in the action as the performer. That is why Actual Lives begins by the writing down of compelling, or powerful, memories and then ends with the act of performance, when the individual reenacts this memory. It is an old adage of theater that by performing a thing one becomes it. Thus, the reenactment of a compelling moment allows that individual to then become compelling.
Autobiography gives people a chance to articulate their own lives; to put forth their own arguments, their own interpretations of who they are and how they came to be. People with disabilities often feel that their stories are taken away from them; that politicians, professional care givers, or members of their own families sometimes unintentionally or deliberately tailor the stories to suit some other political, professional or personal agenda. By writing about their own lives, disabled adults are able to take control of what their lives mean. They can make their own personal and political statements. The act of constructing an autobiography is an optimistic act, one that implies an acknowledgement (on the part of both writer and audience) of the inherent worth and value of the life being shared. In writing autobiographically the writers also claim their own self worth. It is that premise that makes autobiography the most democratic of acts. The implication is that if one voice is worth hearing, every voice is worth hearing. The misconceptions that the general public may have about people with disabilities can be set straight with frank, moving, engaging accounts of how life as a disabled person is in fact. Disability as articulated by the disabled is no longer presented as sugar coated or tear jerking, but as something infinitely more complicated, infinitely more like their own lives.
Live performance offers the immediacy of shared reality. Someone from both ends of the process is always there. The audience is never alone in its experience of the work. They are always accompanied by someone responsible for the creation; if not the writer then the performer, or in the case of Actual Lives, by both the writer/performer. This kind of immediacy gives disabled people a chance to see how their lives play out to a larger public, to check their own perceptions; to see if what outraged them outrages others; if what made them laugh gives the audience the giggles. It also gives the audience a context in which to test their perceptions. Have they been guilty of stereotyping? Do they themselves feel stereotyped? Performance can be a tool, a way of turning the tables on the larger society. The key is the presence of the body on stage in front of an audience.
Outside of theater the audience controls the medium. They can turn off a TV, a radio, put down a magazine, or walk out of a movie without confronting the writer, the actor. The reaction of the audience for better or for worse usually occurs without the presence of the creator. Public moments of intimate self-revelation are meant to be expansive; they are meant to draw people together through the acknowledgement of shared experience. That is what theater has always done. The very thing that makes theater expansive as well as intimate also makes it much more immediately confrontational. Therefore, it has its risks.
People who are disabled are sometimes dependent on family and institutions to support them and may fear the consequences of expressing themselves candidly. The pressure then is to side step anything negative or controversial, be it sexual frustration, drug experimentation or the insolence of professional caregivers or agency staff. But confrontation within theater is structured confrontation. It is a space in which people with disabilities can confront a society that may not know or value them. It is a chance for disabled adults to confront the people who stop them in grocery stores to ask "What happened to you?" To put such questioning in a context gives the disabled person the power to take control of the question; to re-present it as ridiculous, offensive or just plain curious.
Actual Lives Founder,I think of Actual Lives as disabled theatre with an activist agenda. Apparently, others do, too. In 2003, Actual Lives received a "Best Theatrical Activism" award from the Austin Chronicle Reader's Poll. What people continue to see in us, the "activist" part, has to do with several specific motivations and strategies that inform our work.
First, Actual Lives is committed to assembling a diverse group of disabled performers. We value the specific differences of embodiment and experience among those who claim disability as an identity. Actual Lives actively involves participants whose racial identities, social positionings, sexual orientation, as well as type and extent of disability reflect the diversity of the Austin community. Each year we invite new members into the ensemble, so that the composition of the group changes from year to year. A core cadre of performers has solidified, but the company continues to change from show to show depending on the demands of our actual lives.
Second, we practice what Terry Galloway has called "the ethic of accommodation." Becaue we share the goal of being genuinely inclusive in this work, we are willing to spend the money and the time that it takes to change procedures, adapt to limitations, and insure full participation. Accommodation can be as simple as providing an able-bodied assistant to write down what a disabled performer says in order to produce a piece of "writing," or as complicated as finding a way for a light designer with MS to access a second story light booth. In the workshop and in our performances, accommodation is both a strategy that helps us accomplish the generation of the narratives and their transformation into performance pieces, and a commitment to the performers to make it possible for everyone to participate in whatever way they can.
And last, but certainly not least, Actual Lives is, at its heart, a collaboration.
This collaboration was apparent in the founding of the Actual
Lives Performance Project in Austin. But our conscious collaboration
is also apparent in other ways. Much of the writing is collaborative, in
that a performer presents a seed of an idea to the other participants, receives
and accepts feedback, then modifies or extends the writing in response to
the feedback. Once the narratives are written, performers often collaborate
to bring them to the stage as small group pieces instead of solo work, a
practice that always invigorates the piece. There is collaboration between
the directors and the performers, as well. Sometimes the director(s) have
one idea for how a piece should go, the performers have another. Compromise,
real listening, and trust in a common goal - to produce the most effective
work possible - keeps everyone flexible and these collaborative pieces are
some of our best.
Working with Actual Lives for the past seven years, I have learned more
about disability than I learned in over 25 years as an occupational therapist.
I've had many uncomfortable moments working with disabled people as colleagues
and friends, moments where my old biases showed, but all of them have helped
me better understand myself and my culture. Part of my goal for the future
of this work is to use it as a vehicle for sustaining a conversation about
rehabilitation, the pathologizing of difference, the limits of clinical
models of interaction, the problems with "treatment." Theatre
is a great tool for introducing a tough-to-deal-with concept, and doing
it painlessly. There's a built in distance that allows us to critique cultural
and medical attitudes toward disability, reassert the sexuality of disabled
people, and trouble the reduction of disability to metaphor.
I would not be the person I am today without Actual Lives, and I look forward
to seeing what the future holds for us.
Actual Lives is one of several programs from VSA arts of Texas to bring people with disabilities complete access to cultural, artistic, and educational venues, programs and employment.
