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1

Paget, Derek. "The Precariousness of Political Theatre." New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 4 (November 2000): 388–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00014135.

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LIKE Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, I find myself wanting to ring up ‘old Baz Kershaw’. The insertion of personal history into an academic text that is to be found in The Radical in Performance, in itself radical, inspires this tactic. It also inspires my determination to refer to ‘Baz’ throughout this response. The available alternatives just don't feel right: ‘Kershaw’ carries reminders of the 1950s grammar school that (mis-) shaped me; ‘Professor Kershaw’ seems curiously over-formal in the context of my enjoyment of this book; ‘Barrie Kershaw’ (yes, I saw him once quoted as such in the THES) is frankly unfamiliar; ‘the author’ a coy statement of the obvious.
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Kershaw, Baz. "Fighting in the Streets: Dramaturgies of Popular Protest, 1968—1989." New Theatre Quarterly 13, no. 51 (August 1997): 255–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x0001126x.

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Everybody would agree that agitational political theatre has fallen on hard times, but whether this is due to a changed political climate, a changed theatre, or a more politicized relationship between companies and funding bodies remains a matter for debate. Here, Baz Kershaw adopts a lateral approach to the problem, looking not at dramatized forms of protest but at protest as an action which has itself become increasingly theatricalized – in part owing to its own tactics and choices, in part to the ways in which media coverage creates its own version of politics as performance. After looking at the major focuses of protest in two decades after 1968, Baz Kershaw examines the ways in which political and performance theory has and has not addressed the issue. Presently Head of the Department of Theatre Studies in the University of Lancaster, his previous publications includeEngineers of the Imagination: the Welfare State Handbook(with Tony Coult, 1983) andthe Politics of Performance: Political Theatre as Cultural Intervention(1992).
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Kershaw, Baz. "Poaching in Thatcherland: a Case of Radical Community Theatre." New Theatre Quarterly 9, no. 34 (May 1993): 121–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00007715.

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EMMA was one of the many small-scale touring groups which flourished as part of the community theatre movement of the 1970s. That it died within a year of the Thatcher decade was due, ironically, not to direct political intervention but to a financial crisis within its funding body, East Midlands Arts, brought on by its attempt to centralize community projects and render them safely retrospective. Here, Baz Kershaw compares the practice of EMMA with its stated intentions, and looks in detail at one of its self-created plays, The Poacher, as an example of ‘performative contradiction’ – in this case, the making of a subversive political statement within the ostensibly safe ambience of the rural nostalgia industry. Baz Kershaw, who lectures in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University, wrote for the original Theatre Quarterly on the rural community arts group Medium Fair. He has also contributed to Performance and Theatre Papers, and was co-author with Tony Coult of a study of Welfare State, Engineers of the Imagination. His most recent work is The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (Routledge, 1992).
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4

Kershaw, Baz. "Dramas of the Performative Society: Theatre at the End of its Tether." New Theatre Quarterly 17, no. 3 (August 2001): 203–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x0001472x.

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The emergence of new performance paradigms in the second half of the twentieth century is only now being recognized as a fresh phase in human history. The creation of the new discipline, or, as some would call it, the anti-discipline of performance studies in universities is just a small chapter in a ubiquitous story. Everywhere performance is becoming a key quality of endeavour, whether in science and technology, commerce and industry, government and civics, or humanities and the arts. We are experiencing the creation of what Baz Kershaw here calls the ‘performative society’ – a society in which the human is crucially constituted through performance. But in such a society, what happens to the traditional notions and practices of drama and theatre? In this inaugural lecture, Kershaw looks for signs and portents of the future of drama and theatre in the performative society, finds mostly dissolution and deep panic, and tentatively suggests the need for a radical turn that will embrace the promiscuity of performance. Baz Kershaw, currently Professor of Drama at the University of Bristol, trained and worked as a design engineer before reading English and Philosophy at Manchester University. He has had extensive experience as a director and writer in radical theatre, including productions at the Drury Lane Arts Lab and with the Devon-based group Medium Fair, where he founded the first reminiscence theatre company Fair Old Times. His latest book is The Radical in Performance (Routledge, 1999). More recently he wrote about the ecologies of performance in NTQ 62.
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5

Kershaw, Baz. "Building an Unstable Pyramid: the Fragmentation of Alternative Theatre." New Theatre Quarterly 9, no. 36 (November 1993): 341–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00008241.

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In his earlier article, ‘Poaching in Thatcherland: a Case of Radical Community Theatre’, (NTQ34, May 1993), Baz Kershaw explored the work of the regional touring group EMMA during the 1970s, looking in particular at the quality of ‘performative contradiction’ which enabled it, for example, to make a subversive political statement within the ostensibly safe ambience of a play steeped in rural nostalgia. Here, he explores other paradoxes of that era of burgeoning alternative and community theatre activity in the years before Thatcher, assessing the role and the ‘hidden agenda’ of the funding bodies, and analyzing and contrasting the working methods, aims, and resources of two of their very different clients – the ‘national’ fringe company Joint Stock, and the small-scale ‘reminiscence theatre’ group, Fair Old Times. Although both groups were engaged in the ostensibly radical and oppositional theatre practice which eventually led to their closures, there was, notes Kershaw, an increasing tendency by the funding bodies to judge the work of the latter by the more amply endowed standards of the former. Baz Kershaw, who lectures in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University, wrote for the original Theatre Quarterly on the work of Fair Old Times's ‘parent’ company, Medium Fair (TQ30, 1978), and has put the present studies into a broader context in his most recent book, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (Routledge, 1992). He is co-author, with Tony Coult, of Engineers of the Imagination (Methuen, 1983), a study of Welfare State, and has also contributed to Performance and Theatre Papers.
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6

Kershaw, Baz. "The Theatrical Biosphere and Ecologies of Performance." New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 2 (May 2000): 122–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00013634.

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In what would a postmodern theatrum mundi, or ‘theatre of the world’, consist? In an ironic inversion of the very concept, with the microcosm issuing a unilateral declaration of independence – or of incorporation? Or in a neo-neoplatonic recognition that it is but a cultural construct of an outer world that is itself culturally constructed? In the following article, Baz Kershaw makes connections between the high-imperial Victorian love of glasshouses, which at once created and constrained their ‘theatre of nature’, and the massive 'nineties ecological experiment of ‘Biosphere II’ – ‘a gigantic glass ark the size of an aircraft hangar situated in the Southern Arizona desert’, which embraces all the main types of terrain in the global eco-system. In the Biosphere's ambiguous position between deeply serious scientific experiment and commodified theme park, Kershaw sees an hermetically-sealed system analogous to much contemporary theatre – whose intrinsic opacity is often further blurred by a theorizing no less reductive than that of the obsessive Victorian taxonomists. He offers not answers, but ‘meditations’ on the problem of creating an ecologically meaningful theatre. Baz Kershaw, currently Professor of Drama at the University of Bristol, originally trained and worked as a design engineer. He has had extensive experience as a director and writer in radical theatre, including productions at the Drury Lane Arts Lab and as co-director of Medium Fair, the first mobile rural community arts group, and of the reminiscence theatre company Fair Old Times. He is the author of The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (Routledge, 1992) and The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard (Routledge, 1999), and co-author of Engineers of the Imagination: the Welfare State Handbook (Methuen, 1990).
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7

Boon, Richard. "A Review ofThe Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillardby Baz Kershaw." Contemporary Theatre Review 11, no. 2 (January 2001): 93–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10486800108568628.

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8

Kershaw, Bez. "Performance Studies and Po-chang’s Ox: Steps to a Paradoxology of Performance." New Theatre Quarterly 22, no. 1 (February 2006): 30–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x06000285.

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Invited by NTQ to review two recent books on performance studies – Jon McKenzie's Perform or Else: from Discipline to Performance and Richard Schechners's Performance Studies: an Introduction – Baz Kershaw found himself in a Catch-22 situation: given the vast territories they claimed for the discipline, how could a short survey do them justice? Yet more perplexing, how might a close analysis of their diffusive visions proceed, even in a longer essay? Struck by their common use of air disasters as denouements and their respective publication dates just six months before and after 9/11, he uses these and other homologies as a route into exploring the ethical and political implications for the new century of the arguments employed by the two texts. Drawing on the philosophical innovation of ‘dialetheism’, which deploys paradox to stretch the bounds of classical logic, he also considers the books' differences and suggests a kind of de-territorialized reconciliation through his notion of a ‘paradoxology’ of performance. He offers the resulting search for depth in surfaces, beginnings in endings, presence in absences, and truth in contradictions as an exemplification of philosopher Po-chang's aphorism about the quest for Buddha's nature: ‘It’s much like riding an ox in search of the ox.’ Baz Kershaw holds the Chair of Drama at Bristol University. His many publications include Engineers of the Imagination (Methuen, 1990), The Politics of Performance (Routledge, 1992), and The Radical in Performance (Routledge, 1999), and he is editor of The Cambridge History of British Theatre: Volume 3, Since 1895 (CUP, 2005). He is also Director of the AHRC-funded major research project PARIP – Practice as Research in Performance.
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9

Freeman, Sara. "Towards a Genealogy and Taxonomy of British Alternative Theatre." New Theatre Quarterly 22, no. 4 (October 20, 2006): 364–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x06000558.

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In the third volume of The Cambridge History of British Theatre (2004), editor Baz Kershaw initiates his chapter ‘Alternative Theatres, 1946–2000’ with a short discussion of ‘contesting terms’ used by commentators to describe theatre outside the mainstream in the second half of the twentieth century. Kershaw's discussion serves as a necessary preface to ground his use of multiple historiographical strategies to address the subject with necessary brevity. But teasing out the terminology used to describe alternative theatre remains a fascinatingly complex task, constitutive of precisely the issues at stake in the variant historiographical approaches to the post-war period. Using a genealogical approach inspired by Foucault, and drawing on first-person interviews with artists who worked with alternative theatre companies such as Joint Stock/Out of Joint, Gay Sweatshop, and Women's Theatre Group/The Sphinx across the closing decades of the twentieth century, Sara Freeman analyzes the branching relationships of these terms, arguing the need to develop useful rather than funerary or bewildered historiographical approaches to the 1980s and 1990s. Sara Freeman is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Illinois Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on contemporary women playwrights and British alternative theatre, and she has published articles and reviews in Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, Comparative Drama, New England Theatre Journal, and Theatre Journal. Work on this article was supported by an Artistic and Scholarly Development Grant from Illinois Wesleyan University.
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10

Cochrane, Claire. "Theatre and Urban Space: the Case of Birmingham Rep." New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 2 (May 2000): 137–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00013658.

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In NTQ61, Deborah Saivetz described the attempts over the past decade of the Italian director Pino DiBuduo to create ‘invisible cities’ – performances intended to restore the relationship between urban spaces and their inhabitants, through exploring the actual and spiritual histories of both. Earlier in the present issue, Baz Kershaw suggests some broader analogies between the theatre and its macrocosmic environment. Here, Claire Cochrane, who teaches at University College, Worcester, narrows the focus to a particular British city and the role over time of a specific theatre in relation to its urban setting. Her subject is the history and development of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in relation to the city – of which its founder, Barry Jackson, was a lifelong resident – as an outcome of the city's growth in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, which made it distinctive in terms of its manufactures, the workers and entrepreneurs who produced them, and a civic consciousness that was disputed yet also shared. She traces, too, the transition between old and new theatre buildings and spaces which continued to reflect shifting class and cultural relationships as the city, its politicians, and its planners adapted to the second half of the twentieth century.
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11

White, Michael. "Resources for a Journey of Hope: the Work of Welfare State International." New Theatre Quarterly 4, no. 15 (August 1988): 195–208. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00002748.

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Founded by John Fox in Bradford in 1968, Welfare State International – WSI for short – is a consortium of freelance associates, many of whom have a fine art background. Funded by the Arts Council to research prototype forms of visual, celebratory theatre and ceremonial art, the company has achieved an international reputation for its original and pioneering work, having worked for and with communities throughout Britain and Europe, and as far afield as Japan, Australia, the USA, Canada, and Tanzania. Handcrafted celebratory events may variously incorporate specially made pyrotechnic animations, iceworks, architectural lanterns, carnival orchestras, oratorios of popular song, clay grottoes, mobile tableaux of performance art, theatrical transformations, surreal films, and infernal sculptural machines. WSI has consistently explored the territory between theatrical product and applied anthropology. In the original series of Theatre Quarterly, a feature in TQ8 (1972), compiled by John Fox, described and illustrated the company's early years, and in 1983 Tony Coult and Baz Kershaw edited a ‘Welfare State Handbook’ for Methuen, entitled Engineers of the Imagination. As the company celebrates its twentieth anniversary, its Development Director, Michael White, looks at some current directions and preoccupations in WSI's work and thinking.
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12

Hughes, Jenny. "Baz Kershaw Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance EventsCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 353 p. £55.00. ISBN: 978-0-521-87716-9." New Theatre Quarterly 25, no. 1 (February 2009): 102–3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x09000165.

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13

Wilcox, Dean. "The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard. By Baz Kershaw. London: Routledge, 1999. Pp. xiv + 252, illus. £16.99; $24.99 Pb." Theatre Research International 25, no. 3 (2000): 303–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0307883300019866.

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14

Harding, James. "The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard. By Baz Kershaw. New York: Routledge. 1999; pp. 252. 16 illustrations. $24.99 paperback." Theatre Survey 41, no. 2 (November 2000): 117–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040557400003884.

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15

Seymour, Anna. "Baz Kershaw The Politics of PerformanceLondon: Routledge, 1992. 281 p. £30 (hbk), £10.99 (pbk). ISBN 0-413-05762-0 (hbk), 0-415-08244-7 (pbk)." New Theatre Quarterly 9, no. 34 (May 1993): 199. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00007867.

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Price, Amanda. "Tony Coult and Baz Kershaw, eds. Engineers of the Imagination: the Welfare State HandbookLondon: Methuen, revised ed., 1990. 272 p. £8.99. ISBN 0-413-52800-6." New Theatre Quarterly 7, no. 28 (November 1991): 397–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00006151.

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Mazer, Sharon. "Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events. By Baz Kershaw. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008; pp. xvi+353, 15 illus. $100 cloth, $39.99 paper." Theatre Survey 51, no. 2 (October 18, 2010): 323–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040557410000499.

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Pitches, Jonathan. "Ludivine Allegue, Simon Jones, Baz Kershaw and Angela Piccini, ed. Practice as Research in Performance and ScreenBasingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 260 p. DVD. £70.00. ISBN: 978-0-230-22001-0." New Theatre Quarterly 26, no. 4 (November 2010): 397–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x10000734.

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19

Newey, Katherine. "General editor: Peter Thomson. The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Jane Milling and Peter Thomson, ed. Volume 1: Origins to 1660. Joseph Donohue, ed. Volume 2: 1660–1895. Baz Kershaw, ed. Volume 3: Since 1895. Cambridge University Press, 2004. £300. ISBN: 978-0-521-82790-4." New Theatre Quarterly 23, no. 2 (May 2007): 188–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x0723009x.

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Merridale, Catherine. "Reviews : Life in the Third Reich. Edited with an introduction by Richard Bessel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, I987. II0 pp. £I2.95. An American Island in Hitler's Reich: The Bad Nauheim Internment. By Charles B. Burdick. Menlo Park, California: Markgraf Publica tions Group, I988. I20 pp. $32.95 (hardcover); $18.95 (paperback). The Voice of the SS: A History of the Journal 'Das Schwarze Korps'. By William L. Combs. New York/Bern/Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, I986. 40I pp. $89. Atlas of Nazi Germany. By Michael Freeman. Beckenham: Croom Helm, I987. I89 pp. £25. The Hitler Myth. By Ian Kershaw. Oxford: Clarendon Press, I987. 269 pp. £27.50. The Social Basis of European Fascist Movements. Edited by Detlef Muhlenberger. Beckenham: Croom Helm, I987. 348 pp. £25. George Saunders on Germany. Introduced and edited by Keith M. Wilson. Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, I987. II9 pp. £I0." Journal of European Studies 18, no. 4 (December 1988): 292–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004724418801800414.

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21

"Clive Barker Remembered." New Theatre Quarterly 21, no. 3 (July 18, 2005): 203–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x05000102.

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Clive Barker, co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly since the journal was relaunched under its new title in 1985, died following a stroke on 17 March 2005, at the age of seventy-three. We plan to include a full commemoration of his life in a subsequent issue, and will welcome contributions—either directly relating to Clive's life and work in the theatre, or addressing issues close to his heart. Meanwhile, some briefer tributes are offered here—a survey of his life and achievements by Baz Kershaw, and personal recollections from his friend and archivist Dick McCaw and from fellow-editor Simon Trussler.
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22

Ronan, Joanna (Jo). "Performance as Product, Process and Pedagogy: Laboring for Truth as Artist and Academic." PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research 4, no. 1 (August 31, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.33011/partake.v4i1.529.

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As part of my practice-based doctoral thesis, I designed an experiment to develop a model of collaborative theatre-making based on collective ownership, in contrast to prevailing hierarchical collaborative practice, where artistic vision lies mainly with the director, and divisions of labour dominate. I conducted the experiment in the real world of rehearsals and performances with a theatre collective I established for this purpose. In this article I discuss my Marxist framework, justifying why I believe capital and cooperation to be the primary dialectic of cultural economy, at the root of the hegemony of hierarchical collaborative theatre. I identify the relationship between Marxist theory and Alain Badiou’s (2005) disruption of the status quo via ‘truth’, as well as and Baz Kershaw’s (2011) essential components for PAR, premised on dialectical paradoxes. I discuss Dialectical Collaborative Theatre (DCT), the original research, rehearsal and performance pedagogy I developed in response to prevailing collaborative practice. While ideology and ethics are integral to DCT, the focus of this article is the pedagogy born out of the dialectical interplay between praxis and truth. I am currently exploring the ideology of DCT in another forthcoming and parallel article, "Dialectical Collaborative Theatre: Ideology, Ethics and the Practice of Equality."
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Heim, Caroline, and Christian Heim. "Marginalising the Mainstream: A Signed Performance of The Miracle Worker Places Deaf Issues Centre-Stage." M/C Journal 13, no. 3 (June 30, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.265.

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Partaking of theatrical events is something that hearing and seeing members of the community can largely take for granted. In Australia, this is still not accessible to all. Crossbow Production’s 2009 staging of William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker offered the opportunity not only to explore the issues of the play, but this issue of accessibility for whom the protagonist can be considered the exemplary role-model. Crossbow’s aim was to introduce a mainstream audience to some of the world experience of those living with disabilities. This was achieved through the exploration of objects apart from their contexts, emphasising the senses of touch, taste and smell, and through the discourse of marginalisation as an integral part of the staging of this theatrical event. Sign language interpreters were given centre-stage and techniques were used to, at times, marginalise the largely non-signing audience. Post-performance discussions were held which privileged the comments of the deaf and the blind audience members. This paper argues, through the example and evidence of this theatrical event that a way needs to be found to increase access to theatrical events for the deaf.“Accessibility for all” is one of the marketing phrases employed by major events companies. In contemporary society where wheelchair access, audio description and assistance dogs are advertised as part of accessibility, it is surprising how many Australian state theatre companies provide very little if any real access for the deaf. In the United States, it would be atypical to attend a large public event, be it a theatre production, a church service or a public event that was not sign language interpreted or open captioned for the deaf, at least in large cities. One of the few theatre companies in Australia that offers interpretation for the deaf is Sydney Theatre Company. Yet only one performance of four plays in a season of 13 plays is interpreted. In a progressive incentive, Melbourne Theatre Company invest $40 000 a year towards accessibility for those living with disabilities. Similar to Sydney Theatre Company, one performance in each production is open captioned for the deaf. Queensland Theatre Company provides access to one performance only in a yearly season of 255 performances. Access for the deaf to attend mainstream theatre productions in Australia is relatively restricted if not totally denied.Crossbow Productions is an independent, not-for-profit professional theatre company which presented a production that engaged with these issues. William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker was staged at the Brisbane Powerhouse in June 2009. The play explores issues of marginalisation, communication and empowerment. Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) was a deaf-blind author, activist and outspoken speaker who become a world famous inspirational presenter and author. She grew up in an influential family in post-civil war Alabama and was struck deaf and blind after contracting (likely) scarlet fever at eighteen months. Determined to find help, her mother appealed to many high-profile doctors and educators, including Alexander G. Bell. Annie Sullivan then became Helen’s governess, teacher and life-long companion. The Miracle Worker explores Annie’s beleaguered attempts to communicate with Helen and concludes with an epiphany for Helen as she learns the significance of words, and eventually how to speak. It asks the audience to confront the issues faced by the deaf and the blind and questions the audience’s perceptions of the sensory world. Crossbow’s production at the Powerhouse included elements to construct a sensory world for the audience. As a concession to hearing and seeing audience members, saturated colours were chosen for each scene and live music was a feature. The senses of smell, taste and touch, however, were particularly emphasised. This gave audience members a sense of Helen’s world and how rich it can be without reliance on sight and sound for information and experience. To introduce fragrance, large arrangements of live scented flowers were placed on the stage. Two hot meals were served. Food emerged as a language in itself: as both a communicative tool to pacify Helen and as a reward to access her latent intelligence. Touch was an integral part of the production with fabric textures, a variety of materials and objects’ shapes explored by Helen and was emphasised from the commencement of the rehearsal process. The actor playing Helen, Louise Brehmer, was blindfolded and wore earplugs for much of the rehearsal period. Immersed in a dark and soundless world she discovered how to read situations, people and objects by touch. This translated into the performances. The audience vicariously experienced discoveries of explored objects with Helen. As Helen explored found objects such as the contents of a suitcase, the audience was confronted with the Heideggerian question: what is a thing? In Helen’s predicament things could be examined apart from their function, accepted meaning or name. This was emphasised by Helen exploring the form and material of each new object and thinking less about their function or context. Annie Sullivan’s glasses became “that hard thing”, her scarf “that soft, light thing”, her suitcase “that cube-like thing.” People may often miss out on the richness of objects’ attributes because they are placed in a functional context quickly. Helen’s discovery of found objects asked the audience to consider their unexamined assumptions about what a suitcase or a flower was (Heidegger 49-50). It is interesting to note that Brehmer’s acclaimed performance was so convincing that many audience members thought that she was indeed deaf and blind. The sensory discourses of the play forced hearing audiences to question their perceptions. The following excerpt from a post-performance discussion illustrates this: I thought I would be thinking more about sight and hearing. But it was actually touch and smell that intrigued me. But even more than that, I found myself trying to conceive of the timeframe. What time must have meant: a totally different dimension of time. I was dwelling on that quite a bit through the play: Helen was floating in her own individual time.And to add to that gentleman’s comment: what stimulates the mind, in those blank times when there is no tactile, no communication with reality: what keeps the mind alive?The most important addition to the production of The Miracle Worker was the inclusion of “shadow-signing” a process in which a signer closely follows actors playing certain characters. Sign interpretation was not a part of Gibson’s play. The added signing exemplified a central issue of this production: sign interpreters are usually “marginalised” by being placed at the sides of the events they are interpreting. This becomes a metaphor for the continued marginalisation of those living with disabilities. In The Miracle Worker they were placed onstage and were part of the production’s narrative. Furthermore, the signers interpreted the emotional states of the characters they were shadowing through facial and body expression. At times they stood beside the characters and other times they sat together on the edge of the stage in conversation. The addition of interpreter/actors added new layers of meaning for the audience. In theatrical performances, layers of meaning are carried to the audience through various texts or public discourses (Knowles 91): the written text, music, lighting, staging, actors’ movements and characterisation and so forth. By being placed on stage, the signing became a text in itself rather than merely a means of interpreting a text unavailable to deaf people. Signers use their body and facial expression as signifiers of meaning. This was used artistically on stage. Signing is an expressive drama in itself, emphasising movement and expression. At times, for example, the signers were sitting close together on the edge of the stage, at others they were far apart at the back, and at other times they would offer a commentary on the action of the play through their body language and positioning. This was extended to the non-signing characters: each character had their own kinesics. The actor playing Annie was directed to use her hands a lot to express herself. Conversely, the actor playing Helen’s mother was directed to use her hands less and be “held together” when it came to non-verbal expression. This carried various meanings to the audience over and beyond the meaning of the words themselves. As the Australian version of the language of signing, Auslan, grew out of the work of Annie Sullivan and her attempts to communicate with Helen, this language of signing was integral to the core issues of the play.In addition to bringing deaf issues centre-stage, the sign interpretation was used to give the mainstream audience, unused to experiencing marginalisation in the theatre, an understanding of exclusion. The play opened and closed with the interpreters signing to the audience. As this was not underscored by any spoken dialogue the non-signers did not understand what was communicated. This gave some audience members a sense of displacement. An audience member commented: I thought how you started and finished the play with sign language was very powerful. It really raised my awareness of people that feel marginalised. Because I, as a hearing person, couldn’t understand the signing and felt left out. It just opened my eyes, just a little bit to what it must be like. (Heim 2)At one matinee performance, episodes occurred in which the entire hearing audience experienced exclusion. The number of deaf people came close to equalising the hearing. In this performance a number of elements worked to marginalise the hearing audience. The actors playing Helen and Annie were scripted to sign words to each other. During these moments, the words were signed before they were spoken or they were not spoken at all. Deaf audience members understood the meaning of the lines before, or to the exclusion of, the hearing audience. Some of these communications were humourous. The deaf audience would break into laugher while the hearing audience sat bewildered. One of the most significant aspects of this particular performance was the relative abandonment of accepted theatre etiquette strictures. In contemporary theatre, audience behaviour is regulated to laughter and applause in appropriate moments (Kershaw 140, 151). During this performance many deaf audience members, having never attended a theatre performance before, laughed in “inappropriate” places, applauded during the performance, wept out loud and spoke back to the actors on stage or to each other. This was a theatrical event enjoyed as if in the nineteenth century when audience members laughed, cried, stamped, sang and spoke (Blackadder 120) through performances. Not only enjoyed by the audience, the actors found this particular performance one of their most heightened experiences in the theatre. In a significant inversion, the hearing mainstream audience was marginalised and the deaf audience privileged. Interestingly, in a post-performance discussion, one audience member suggested a complete inversion: “Did you think of just having the main actors act and sign at the same time?” (Heim 3). Post-performance discussions also raised hearing audience member’s awareness of those living with disabilities. Discussions were held where the audience was given an opportunity to discuss their stories. A large variety of issues were discussed by the hearing and deaf participants such as the genuine struggles faced in a household with a deaf person, sibling rivalry and communication issues. Comments ranged from “I could relate to Helen’s family. It was like that in my family with me growing up deaf. The frustration is enormous. There were tantrums and fights. Families need to learn signing, after all, it is our first language” (Heim 2) to “I think everyone is still drying their eyes. Very moving. Very, very moving” (Heim 1). In one discussion Penny Harland, a blind and deaf educator was introduced and spoke to the audience. A question was asked by a hearing member that worked to further marginalise the mainstream audience: “What did you think of in those moments when you couldn’t understand or communicate anything of the world?” (Heim 4). Harland refused to answer the question and instead described a moment from the play where Helen was discovering a suitcase and explained how inaccurate the actor was in her “discovery.” Heidegger’s concept of the difference in “experiencing” objects was painfully exposed (49, 50). Comments from post-performance discussions emphasised the great need for more accessibility. As one participant commented: “I’m deaf and we should be able to go to anything, and you’ve done that for us” (Heim 1). Others complained that not every word was interpreted. Because of budget restrictions, Crossbow hired actors that could sign and were willing to perform and interpret for a small fee. The actors were not confident enough as interpreters to sign the whole production. Comments such as “We appreciated the signing, but we wanted more” (Heim 1) and “we were disappointed the whole thing wasn’t signed. There were words going on we didn’t understand” (Heim 4) were frequent. As there were also tactile tours of the set before each performance for the blind, one blind audience member commented: As a blind person, I got a great deal from it. I found it extremely moving and it has motivated me to read more about miraculous stories. The opportunity to have the tactile tour before the show did help me to visualise better what was going on, so that was a very welcome innovation as well. So I found the night thoroughly moving and worthwhile and I’ll certainly agree with the comment that there should be a thousand or so in the audience rather than a hundred so that everyone can experience it. (Heim 3)These comments and many more from both the discussions and emails to the Powerhouse after the production emphasised not only the gratefulness of the deaf community but more importantly the need for more accessibility to theatre events. The response to The Miracle Worker from the deaf community was significant. Over 250 deaf people attended and 70 of these had never been to a theatrical production before. Deaf Services Queensland and Vision Australia were both supportive offering in-kind assistance, promotion and assistance with signing. For its future plays, Crossbow Productions will continue to give tactile tours and, due to cost factors, will sign one performance only using Auslan sign language interpreters. The fee is significant for an independent theatre company: over $1000 to sign a single performance. The response to the staging by Crossbow Productions of William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker strongly suggests that there is significant demand for increased access for deaf audiences at theatrical events. Rather than merely reducing marginalisations, their stories and journeys can be presented and explored in such a way as to enrich the theatrical experience of the mainstream and the marginalised. Exploring objects, emphasising the senses of touch, taste and smell and including signing added to the richness of the theatrical experience. Significantly, the experience of marginalisation of the mainstream in this production also added to the meaning of the theatrical experience. It was hoped that this fostered the appreciation in audience members that the need to increased access for all can be more than worth the cost.ReferencesBlackadder, Neil. Performing Opposition: Modern Theatre and the Scandalised Audience. Westport: Praeger, 2003. Heidegger, Martin. What Is a Thing? Trans. W.B. Barton, Jr., and Vera Deutsch. Chicago: H. Regnery, 1967.Heim, Caroline. Transcript of Post-Performance Discussions of “The Miracle Worker.” By William Gibson, dir. Christian Heim. Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane, 7-17 June 2009. Kershaw, Baz. “Oh for Unruly Audiences! Or, Patterns of Participation in Twentieth Century Theatre.” Modern Drama 42.2 (2001): 133-54. Knowles, Ric. Reading the Material Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.
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