Learning Disability and Contemporary Theatre Jon Palmer and Richard Hayhow

This important book reveals the authors’ insider view on a unique and marginalised theatre practice over a 20-year-period. It is, to my knowledge, the only book that explores theatre involving learning disabled artists as theatre rather than social care or therapy. For this reason it is a vital document that contributes to a growing interest in the field and will introduce students of theatre to a rich and provocative art practice. The book is particularly strong in highlighting the “vast misperceptions around learning disability… which tend to emphasise ‘lacks’ (and) failures’ rather than ‘difference (or) individuality’”, and the lack of appropriate performer training available to the vast majority of learning disabled actors, which the authors point to as unacceptable discrimination.

This is a deeply felt book which makes a case for what the authors refer to as an “authentic” theatre. Conceived in the work of their respective companies (The Shysters and Full Body And the Voice), this notion has driven their work. Broadly, they refer to the learning disabled person as inhabiting a different place socially and culturally, a place which troubles the norms and control mechanisms of our world. They translate this notion of difference into performance: they advocate work that “arises from the needs and abilities of the individual performer on the grounds that an authentic performance will never come from imposing alien theatrical models on the actor”. ‘Authenticity’ is a complex and highly subjective terrain. This is a highly partial book, which often works in its favour but eventually leaves the reader craving greater multiplicity of perspective. The title itself implies a breadth of reference and context that is not present: no mention here of Australian company Back to Back’s genre-defying ‘Small Metal Objects’. Bradford-based Mind the Gap also receives scant attention. Both these companies would have added to the aesthetic reach of the book – and offered a contrast to the kind of authenticity conceived by the authors.
I would have welcomed a little more gritty realism, too. Presumably, theirs has been a struggle for artistic recognition, full of incident, misunderstanding and hard-earned reward. The tone of the book is polite, often reserved – and I would have welcomed a little more raw stuff: glimpses of private rehearsal, the voices of the actors themselves, audience response, reflections on the collaborations with actors not defined as ‘different’. Frantic Assembly’s new manual charts the development of the company’s aesthetic by detailing various techniques that the student or practitioner can put to immediate use. Palmer and Hayhow eschew such directness because they feel that “other books do this”. I would have welcomed an attempt to describe their emergent voice through the shows.
This is, however, a significant book that should kick-start debates not just about authenticity but also the ethics and aesthetics of socially engaged art practice. Palmer and Hayhow have done the sector a great service,
not just in the publication of this book but in their respective bodies of performance work and a number of collaborative symposia in recent years. This book should encourage far greater critical interest in performance involving the collaboration of learning disabled actors: not as clients or participants but as artists in their own right.