ABSTRACT
From origins in institutions and therapeutic environments in a number of countries, theatrical performance by people with intellectual disabilities has started to take centre stage. Contemporary theatre involving people with intellectual disabilities is still trying to deal with the legacy of the institutional paradigm. Lady Eats Apple and other contemporary practices of theatre involving actors with intellectual disabilities have emerged out of institutions of segregation and representation to make radical promises of emancipation. Asylum was given to people with intellectual disabilities in exchange for lifelong, involuntary segregation. Support based on certain kinds of benevolence and care may too easily become inflected with the religious, moral, and economic values of institutions of intellectual disability, such as Earlswood Asylum. Contemporary theatre has been motivated by religious or spiritual practices that favour narratives of triumph over adversity and of inspiration. The generation of repayment or redemption proves at once the moral, economic, and spiritual efficacies of proscenium arch theatre.
