Watching Me Watching You

Among the markedly abundant, appealingly provocative performers at
this year’s TBA Fest is the Back to Back Theatre. Driven by artists
with intellectual disabilities, it has been operating in Australia for
over 20 years. The subject matter of their productions is serious and
sophisticated, and sometimes very dark. (In response to a play called
Food Court, an audience member noted that, “It is both
empowering and politically imperative that disabled people claim acts
[and thoughts] of brutality—if they don’t, they sit in a category
of otherness that is as patronizing as it is re-disabling.”)

The Mercury contacted the company and found out more about
Back to Back and their upcoming TBA performance from Artistic Director
Bruce Gladwin. Small metal objects takes place in crowded public
locations—malls, transit centers, etc.—with the audience
seated unsubtly on temporary risers. Its actors are embedded within the
traffic of oblivious passersby, many of whom peer curiously at the
audience (which, to those who are oblivious to the embedded actors,
is the spectacle).. Meanwhile the audience is watching the play
and listening to dialogue on headphones corresponding to the
mini-microphoned actors.

MERCURY: I imagine that you’ve encountered
the issue of the exploitation of people with disabilities, and I was
wondering if you could clarify the inception of the company. Whose idea
was it?

BRUCE GLADWIN: Back to Back started in 1987 as a result of a series
of community workshops between visual, theater, and musical artists,
and people with intellectual disabilities in our hometown of Geelong, a
small regional center about one hour from Melbourne. At the time,
government policy was in a phase of deinstitutionalization, and there
were resources to support people with disabilities to live, work, and
engage in the local community. From initial workshops a show was
created, which then began touring. This combination of community
engagement and touring with a fixed ensemble has become a model for
operation [that] the company has maintained over its 22-year history. I
would expect many of the initial artists involved didn’t expect it to
have a life beyond a few years. Many of the guest theater artists in
the late ’80s and early ’90s who worked with the ensemble advocated for
and pushed for the ensemble’s equity of conditions and awards. The
actors with disabilities have always been central in the planning and
decision-making of the organization. Collaboration is central to the
creation of theater.

There are expectations that actors with disabilities should play
certain roles (such as a victim rather than a perpetrator of a violent
action), or that their level of comprehension and understanding is
limited, so they are easily manipulated. We feel confident that the
standard of work we present is excellent, as equal to many of the most
inspiring contemporary theater companies in the world. The work
itself is a litmus test to the actors’ power relationship to the
company. If in the situation [that] an actor was forced to work in a
show they didn’t want to be in, or playing a role in which they didn’t
comprehend its significance, it would be present in, and ultimately
undermine, the artistic achievement of the theatrical work. Exploiting
the actors is obviously not in the actors’ interest, or the company’s
artistic objectives.

Do you see cultural differences in the reactions of the public as
you perform for an increasingly international audience?

Terminology such as “disabled,” “handicapped,” “spastic,”
“retarded,” [or] “learning challenged” vary everywhere. To a large
degree, we try to keep a sense of distance from disability politics and
keep our eye on the task, which is to make great art. Any form of
politics and advocacy comes in the wake of artistic investigation.

Is there a level of “functional” ability that is a precursor for
someone with disabilities to meet in order to participate in a Back to
Back production?

When a position in the ensemble becomes vacant we hold an open
audition process. In the past we have had 80 applicants for one
position. We would tend to appoint an actor on imagination rather than
virtuosity.  

The productions tend to be rather dark, exploring (and using to
advantage) the perspective of the outsider, a category in which many
people, including those with disabilities, find themselves in relation
to society. Would you agree with that assessment?

We are cautious not to speak about people with disabilities in a
general way, but we can reflect an observation that people with
intellectual disabilities tend to sit outside the institutions that
many of us take for granted. For instance, for the actors in our
company, most were never expected to achieve in educational
institutions, to go to university, to secure employment, to earn an
income, to have a life partner, to get married, to have children, to
contribute to the intellectual life of our society, to be commentators
of culture, to contribute to art beyond therapy…. Yes, they do sit
“outside,” and as such they are great commentators on us, “us” being
those who are defined by these institutions.

In pop culture, disabled individuals tend to appear in a comedic
context. I can’t help but think specifically of the American TV
show How’s Your News? The creator—Arthur
Bradford—seems focused on broadening the public’s ability to
relate to disability by showing how vital humor is to that experience.
How do you feel about this approach, and how do you see Back to Back’s
intentions in relation to it?

Our work tends to use anything in the theatrical palette for effect:
comedy or drama, we take it all in and spit it out again. Our most
recent show, Food Court, has received some audience criticism
for being too dark. It’s a story about two women who brutally attack a
third. The action is horrific but it’s presented as a series of
seductively beautiful images. Some have difficulty in people with
disabilities undertaking an act of brutality, to embody evil, and
consider that this somehow dehumanizes people with disabilities. We
tend to feel the opposite; in acknowledging the evil we are rendering
them more human. 

Regardingsmall metal objects: Can you
explain what you mean to communicate through the use of a busy public
space/unwitting participants, and audience as spectacle? Did the story
of the play itself precede this arrangement, or did it originate with
the idea of putting this twist on public performance?

We had a desire to make a performance that happens in a public space
with the general public unwittingly becoming extras in the story. We
wanted to explore a story that examined the relationship of economics
to human value, that is, how someone’s perceived productivity
determined their position within society.

As an approach, we decided to build the story around a financial
transaction that happens on the street, a handshake deal from two sides
of town—the corporate world and the illegal traders of the
street. The initial concept of the form was an experiment; we had no
idea how the audience would deal with being asked to sit on a seating
bank with headphones on, in a busy public space. We were perhaps
unprepared for the impact of the second narrative in the
work, which is the audience’s power relationship to the passing public.
This power can constantly flow between the two entities. Given that the
actors are invisible to the passing public, the audience can be both
spectator and spectacle. For the commuter or shopper, the audience can
look like 150 people with headphones intently staring in one direction
at seemingly nothing. This attracts an audience in its own right.
Simultaneously the four actors play out a story about power and
visibility and profit versus friendship. The performance is constantly
refreshed by playing in new public locations. It is part theater, part
social experiment. In many ways small metal objects reflects a
city back to itself.