Giving and Taking Voice in Learning Disabled Theatre offers unique insight into the question of 'voice' in learning disabled theatre and what is gained and lost in making performance. It is grounded in the author's 18 years of making theatre with Different Light Theatre company in Christchurch, New Zealand, and includes contributions from the artists themselves.

This book draws on an extensive archive of performer interviews, recordings of rehearsal processes, and informal logs of travelling together and sharing experience. These accounts engage with the practical aesthetics of theatre-making as well as their much wider ethical and political implications, relevant to any collaborative process seeking to represent the under- or un-represented. Giving and Taking Voice in Learning Disabled Theatre asks how care and support can be tempered with artistic challenge and rigour and presents a case for how listening learning disabled artists to speech encourages attunement to indigenous knowledge and the cries of the planet in the current socio-ecological crisis.

This is a vital and valuable book for anyone interested in learning disabled theatre, either as a performer, director, dramaturg, critic, or spectator.

About the Author

Tony McCaffrey is a Senior Lecturer at the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art, Ara Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has been Artistic Director of Different Light Theatre since 2004 and is the Co-convenor of the Performance and Disability Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research.

Reviews

"Giving and Taking Voice in Learning Disabled Theatre offers insight into the specific production history of a learning disability-focussed theatre company... I think this book may be most valuable to disability arts scholars looking to engage with the questions that McCaffrey presents and may use this text to situate the work of Different Light alongside other learning-disabled theatre companies." Becky Gold in Research in Drama Education (RiDE): The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

Book Information
ISBN 9780367538972
Author Tony McCaffrey
Format Paperback
Page Count 202
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 360g