ABSTRACT

This edited collection investigates the myriad ways in which disability performance travels in a globalized world.

Disability arts festivals are growing in different parts of the world; theatre and dance companies with disabled artists are increasingly touring and collaborating with international partners. At the same time, theatre spaces are often not accessible, and the necessity of mobility excludes some disabled artists from being part of an international disability arts community. How does disability performance travel, who does not travel – and why? What is the role of funding and producing structures, disability arts festivals, and networks around the world? How do the logics of international (co-)producing govern the way in which disability art is represented internationally? Who is excluded from being part of a touring theatre or dance company, and how can festivals, conferences, and other agents of a growing disability culture create other forms of participation, which are not limited to physical co-presence?

This study will contextualize disability aesthetics, arts, media, and culture in a global frame, yet firmly rooted in its smaller national, state and local community settings and will be of great interest to students and scholars in the field.

chapter |25 pages

Introduction

How Does Disability Performance Travel?

part 1|50 pages

The Politics of Touring and Travelling

chapter 1|11 pages

Putting Myself into Different Spaces

A Performer's Journey Through World Stages

chapter 2|13 pages

The Journey of Maui and Different Light

Fellow Travelling and Learning-Disabled Theatre

chapter 4|15 pages

How Disability Performance Travels in Australia

The Reality Under the Rhetoric

part 2|53 pages

International Flows and Cultural Settings

chapter 6|14 pages

Teatro Patologico Abroad

A Medea for International Audiences

chapter 7|16 pages

How Disability Performances Travel within Taiwan

Sustaining Confrontations and Letting Differences Coexist in I am a Normal Person No.1 and No.2

part 3|74 pages

Embodying Spaces, Mobilizing Environments

chapter 8|23 pages

Unsettling Sitting Modes of Living

The Disability of Sitting as Creative Environmental Mobility

chapter 10|15 pages

Building Communities Online

#DisabilityTwitter and Digital Mobility

chapter 11|19 pages

The Animacy of Ekphrasis

Documenting Performance as Acts of Unfurling Reciprocity

part 4|51 pages

Local, Site-Specific Work, Microcosms, and the Periphery

chapter 13|20 pages

The Travels of a Municipal Theatre Group for People with Learning Disabilities

Attempts at Subverting the Axes of Injustice

chapter 14|17 pages

Optimistic Becomings

Learning Disability Performance Outward Bound 1