ABSTRACT
The last three decades has witnessed the development of a distinct narrative about how disability performance has become a much celebrated component of the Australian theatre landscape. A central aspect of this narrative is the critical importance of festivals, events, and other industry initiatives that allow disabled performers to travel – both conceptually and corporeally – to meet and be mentored by other artists, and to present their work to new and more mainstream audiences, in new spaces and places, around the country, and around the world. In this chapter, we draw on historical data, collected as part of an AusStage ARC LIEF project designed to database information about disability drama, theatre, performance, and dance over the past 100 years, as well as the Last Avant Garde ARC Linkage project on disability performance in Australia, to unpack areas where the reality seems to challenge some of the dominant rhetoric. We suggest a greater understanding of the nuanced reality of how we as disabled artists and arts workers really experience travel through time, space, place, individual careers, and institutions in Australia, underneath the dominant rhetoric, is necessary to ensure future funding for festivals, events, and industry initiatives has better success in supporting the inclusivity aims such programmes are designed to achieve.
