Sensing Performance: Disability and the Aesthetics of Access

The State of Theatre Access 2023 shows that 85% of UK theatres ‘list one or more types of access service for at least one upcoming production’ (2024, 11), an increase from 72% in 2019. The 2023 report also presents, for the first time, data for integrated access—creatively and dramaturgically conceived and available for all performances within a run—finding that half of the theatres in the survey staged at least one production of this description (46). The last four years and the Covid-19 pandemic have initiated shifts in disability discourse in culture and politics. But, in a theatre industry building back better, there is still a strong disparity between aesthetic, integrated access generated by disability-led companies, and the add-on access services permitted by mainstream theatre.

In response, this thesis contributes a focussed and sustained theorisation of theatre captioning, BSL in performance, and modes of audio description, paying attention to the ways these are constructed by disabled artists to form—in my case studies—the basis of their practice. The project is practice-based, combining integrated processes pioneered by disability-led companies and the development of my own practice. This methodology is founded on the premise that a study of access within the context of a particular creative process informs an understanding of its function in performance. I explore insights derived from embedded observation with companies such as Extant and Solar Bear over the course of an iterative cycle of workshops, arriving at a conception of access as reorganising sensory and aesthetic experience in performance. Drawing on the work of scholars including Petra Kuppers, Carrie Sandahl, and Lennard J. Davis, this thesis: advocates for access as scenographic, rather than translatory; argues that accessible theatre prefigures solidaristic relations; and asserts that the aesthetics of access, upon which these arguments depend, resists institutional regulation.