The main focus of Glens Disability Theatre Troupe Project is to use Forum Theatre to raise awareness of the many narratives, crisis and opportunities of local disabled people.
Glens Disability Theatre Troupe Project OBJECTIVES
During The Glens Arts Centre forum theatre disability project disabled actors will be able to:
- Identify a small repertoire of dramatic scenarios relevant to disabled people in Leitrim and neighbouring counties & communities.
- Analyse the above scenarios through Forum theatre emancipatory methodologies informed by the Medical and Social models of disability.
- Evaluate how such Forum Theatre scenarios could be effectively progressed through audience empathy & participation within the performance and supported by post-performance workshops
- Perform a repertoire of up to three scenarios and facilitate participative audiences made up of statutory, voluntary sector staff and disabled people.
- Mentoring of participants in business and performance skills in post training evaluation sessions.
The artistic concept of the project:
The artistic concept for the Glens Disability Theatre Troupe Project is a merging of the what, the how, the why of the ideas, processes and rationale identified from a series of summer 2018 workshops facilitated by disability arts dramatist Peter Kearns with participants from Leitrim’s Disability Equality Network.
The artistic concept for the Glens Disability Theatre Troupe Project is to create a dramatic discourse for & with local disabled actors of what distinguishes authentic portrayals of disabled characters & narrative from clichéd, symbolic, or token representations of disability and its intersections with class and gender. Historically disabled stage characters have been used by non-disabled drama-producers as metaphors for abstract concepts—from goodness and nobility of character, to meekness, weakness, sexual deviancy, evil, Machiavellian and to show social & class disadvantage.
