Of punk and prizes: notes from the Australian neurodiverse theatre company lauded around the world

In a darkish walled rehearsal area, three actors run strains. “Are you OK with the word disability?” begins Simon Laherty. A loyal fan of Britney Spears, he wears a black hoodie emblazoned with the singer and her catchcry “Oops …”

“I don’t think it describes me,” Sarah Mainwaring retorts in a gradual voice, every syllable carrying deep feeling.

The third actor, Scott Price, strokes his Ned Kelly beard, then places a finger in his scorching chocolate and absentmindedly sucks it. “Look, I am a disabled person,” he says, his phrases racing. “I am proud, and I don’t want to have to weave my way around language.”

The trio are members of the internationally lauded, Geelong-based Back to Back Theatre, an ensemble who’re neurodiverse or intellectually disabled or each. Their newest, group-devised work, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, casts a wry and acute look at the slave labour pressured upon the intellectually disabled – and asks what the rise of synthetic intelligence will imply for the neurotypical. Will those that take into account themselves “normal”, as the actors put it, be patronised by genius machines?

Watching the actors block out the scene is Back to Back’s longtime creative director, Bruce Gladwin.

Gladwin sits along with his arms on his knees. 196cm tall and straight-backed, he has the capability to stay totally nonetheless, beholding the performers with preternatural focus.

As a teenager, the director, now 55, had “constant mission drift,” however he discovered his calling in 1989. Gladwin had simply completed a educating diploma and was working in neighborhood theatre when a mentor informed him the most attention-grabbing Australian appearing was taking place in a spot considered a cultural backwater, the industrial city of Geelong.

As he purchased a ticket to see the newly fashioned Back to Back, his mom’s voice was in his ear. He’d been raised to not stare at disabled individuals, and he’d simply paid to take action.

That present was based mostly on a real story a few man and girl who met at a disco at Caloola, a big asylum outdoors the Victorian city of Sunbury. The pair, who immediately grew to become finest associates, would uncover throughout the state’s de-institutionalisation course of that they had been additionally brother and sister.

“There was a moment in that show where they are representing the disco in the institution,” Gladwin recollects. “And one of the characters who’s playing a worker says, “All right, everyone up on the dancefloor!” And just about everybody in the viewers additionally received up on the dancefloor. And it took about quarter-hour to sort of carry the complete efficiency below management.”

Right there, Gladwin had an aesthetic epiphany. The anarchy, the collectivism, the riotous anti-hierarchical spirit beguiled him. He felt he was current at the starting of an artwork motion, and every time Gladwin might, he labored on tasks with the company till in 1999, he grew to become the Back to Back’s creative director.

“When I started,” Gladwin remembers, “I said to the actors, ‘What do you want to do?’ and they basically said, ‘We want to tour the world.’ And we’ve done that. So that’s like a kind of big tick,” he notes with understatement.

Over the final twenty years, Back to Back Theatre has carried out on the principal levels of the world’s main cultural establishments, leaving of their wake rhapsodic critiques. Alison Croggon described Food Court (2008) as the uncommon present that “reminds you that theatre is burning glass, art [that] sears through the intellect into the tissue of deep feeling.” Ganesh Versus the Third Reich (2011), about the elephant-headed god reclaiming the historic Hindu swastika image, was described by The New York Times as “a vital sense-sharpening tonic for theatregoers”. Time Out known as Lady Eats Apple (2016) a creation taking us to “a place of pure love”.

By touring as much as 24 weeks a yr, Back to Back might assure their performers a wage. “And for some of our actors, when they first started working with the company, a lot of them just didn’t have their own money. We would go on tour and we’d hand them a $50 per diem, and that was the first time in their life that they had that level of autonomy.”

Australia weekend

Then got here the plan-burying power of Covid, pulling The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes from the worldwide circuit. The company threw away their touring schedule and as a substitute filmed the play, with a technical crew consisting of 9 members with disabilities who had been mentored by business stalwarts.

Unlike Back to Back performances made for “big stages in Europe”, the ensemble had been working with out “smoke and mirrors.” Everything was stripped again, a return to the punk aesthetic that Gladwin had fallen in love with all these years in the past.

An uncommon request

The director was adjusting to the complexities of all that had been misplaced and discovered, when in late 2021, he fielded an uncommon request.

The conveners of the Norwegian Government’s biennial International Ibsen Award requested for the complete company to assemble for a gathering. The gathering’s goal was not disclosed, and but it needed to happen in a studio with a number of cameras.

Gladwin knew the company had been nominated for the Ibsen Award, considered the Nobel of theatre, and “the stakes were getting higher.” Nevertheless when, with “typical Norwegian restraint”, it was introduced that Back to Back had been the 2022 winners and recipients of the 2.5m Norwegian kroner prize, the ensemble had been genuinely amazed. On the name, the jury members – theatre identities from around the world – learn a collective testimony recognising Back to Back’s astonishing capability to “dissect the unspoken imaginings of society” in order to “reveal the audience to themselves”.

“After the last few years of Covid to feel that you are a part of an international community had a strong impact,” Gladwin admits. “It was lovely hearing people talk not just about one work, but multiple works over the years, from different festivals and locations.”

In the wave of publicity that adopted, nonetheless, Gladwin observed a story rising, alongside the strains of, “‘Aren’t you shocked? You’re just a little theatre company that no one knows about, and you’ve won this huge award!’ And yes, we were shocked.

“And yes, we do feel privileged, but at the same time, the actors have been touring major festivals for two decades and working really hard. And they are really well known and respected for what they do … they deserve it.”

In the rehearsal area, Laherty, Mainwaring and Price, who’ve acted collectively for the final 15 years, give one another assist amid missed cues and excellent deliveries. They every carry a unique depth and charisma to the stage.

Mainwaring, who has an acquired mind damage because of a childhood automobile accident, is mesmerising to observe for the oceanic emotion underlying her strains. Laherty, along with his expressive face and plain supply, anchors the piece. Price, who’s autistic, has a stressed, unpredictable, Brando-like power.

Mid-rehearsal he all of a sudden leaves the room, returning with a letter that he thrusts in Gladwin’s face. “What’s wrong with this?” he calls for.

Gladwin wonders if the punctuation is off.

“No!” It seems the letter, congratulating Price on the Ibsen Award, comes from the faculty the place the actor was incessantly bullied.

Price returns to his strains: “For thousands of years,” he publicizes, “people with disabilities have been abandoned in woods, kept in cellars, tied to beds, experimented on, isolated, gassed, drugged, devalued, victimised, dehumanised, sterilised and euthanised.”

“Given that,” Simon deadpans, as if to the viewers, “I’m amazed anyone turned up tonight, at all.”

And that viewers, when it arrives, could be watching Australia’s most acclaimed theatre company in flight.

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