Well! Show day has come and gone. I like to think that the day ran very smoothly and show itself went very well, by this point what we really needed was an audience and they certainly helped with the overall atmosphere of the piece. Of course there are things about the piece which I would like to change and add. Within the arts industry those with disabilities are under-represented and under-employed. Within The Truth About Bedtime… I was keen to address these issues by including verbatim passages about how those with visual impairments dream and how those with other physical disabilities experience sleep. The main challenge of this of course would not be gathering the information, rather it would be catering the performance to be accessible to those who had provided us with the information. At the beginning of the process it was a part of the show most of us were keen to include. However, as we went further and further into the process we began to realise that, cost wise, it might not be as easy as we would have liked. As a very physical show at times we would not want those with visual impairments to feel disregarded throughout our show, with their views represented but their experience at the performance disregarded. Arts Council England stated in their Making a Shift Report (2018) that discrimination and exclusion faced by those with disabilities is ‘deep rooted and systemic and therefore require long term focus to change’ (Arts Council England, 2018). As a theatre maker this is something I am personally very interested in addressing and creating an arts environment where those who are differently abled feel valued as both creators and consumers of theatre and art. Despite this, inclusion is a difficult and expensive task, before beginning to conduct interviews with those with visual impairments we wanted to know the exact cost of having the performance audio described. It transpired that this process would cost at least £500 meaning that at this moment, with limited funds it was a part of the show we were unfortunately unable to add. In future development for The Truth About Bedtime… I would like to focus our fundraising efforts on being able to audio describe the show in order to make it accessible to the visually impaired, as I feel their voice is one which is missing from the production.
E.H.
Arts Council England (2018) Making a Shift Report. Arts Council England. Available from https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/making-a-shift [accessed 24/05/2018].
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