America beckons A Different Light

12 December 2010
Three artists from Christchurch’s A Different Light Theatre Trust have been invited to perform at the international conference of the Society for Disabilities Studies in San Jose next year.

Artistic director Tony McCaffrey said the conference will be attended by a mixture of academics, performers and activists, “so it is really good networking and a chance to see what is going on in the world of disability culture”.

He has taken groups of Different Light performers to Australia before “although this is a much bigger and demanding deal. But if we don’t try these things, we don’t get anywhere.”

The trip to the United States is being supported by a grant from the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT) Foundation.

Experimental performance

A Different Light was set up six years ago as an experimental performance company, but “the mixed ability side of things has kind of taken over”.

The group’s latest production, The Wizard of Oz, was the third in a row featuring only performers with some form of disability.

“After opening night we were all commenting on how the focus of the performers has grown so much, the devising and ownership of the material has developed hugely, and the sense within the group that if things in the performance don’t go quite as planned, they have the ability to cope.

“That’s quite a high level of processing, of holistic involvement,” said Tony.

Staged as part of CPIT’s Ignition Festival in November, The Wizard of Oz was about the performers’ response to the original film and its characters.

“Some of the responses were quite ironic and funny we hope. Creating the piece got caught up in our experiences during a trip to Sydney with eight performers and a caregiver. We had quite a few adventures over there, and because Australia is Oz, we put those into the show as well.”

Innovative use of  technology

The cast made innovative use of technology, including an iPhone application called Auto Tune that enabled a performer with cerebral palsy to project his ‘voice’ over a background beat.

Tony, an acting and voice tutor at CPIT, is excited by the potential offered by technology, for example to performers with disorders on the autistic spectrum. He is planning a paper next year on assistive technologies.

He is lobbying for “meaningful involvement” of people with disabilities within the faculty of creative industries.

“We have NASDA (the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art), Circus Arts, Jazz School, Art and Design, Broadcasting. My vision would be that we get people categorised as having disabilities more involved, and we use the graduates and undergraduates from those programmes to work with them. There are huge learning opportunities both ways.”

Tony is also trying to organise a tour by performers with disabilities to go round primary schools, “because that is where a lot of the attitudes start”.

A core group of performers has been with A Different Light for its first six years.

“I would say the main development of the group has been letting the people themselves in more and more, to have control and ownership of what is created. There has been a growth in confidence, in the feeling that they have something to say that people will listen to. You scratch the surface with every performance. It is phenomenal.”

And what of Tony’s vision for next six years?

“I’d like to have a centre for diversity in performance in the arts here in Christchurch. I’d like to see festivals and conferences of disability performance. We’ve got a supportive city council, and having a flat city makes it quite accessible. We have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this work.”