ABSTRACT
This chapter frames the early development of Different Light Theatre from workshops in a residential institution to public performances in terms of Derrida's paradox of hospitality and hostility. It shows how this dynamic and tension was present from the earliest attempts to establish community within the group and to tell stories based on myths attempting to assert community. The chapter gives an account of how performance personae were developed for the learning disabled participants informed by the observations of non-disabled participants through processes of devising and improvisation based on the normative assumptions and ethos of a conventional Western drama school. It traces the responses of the learning disabled participants to the conventional assumptions of theatrical characterization and narrative and how this prompted different ways of working. Finally, it addresses how expectations and assumptions of ‘development’ determined the company's praxis and power relations. During this phase of development, it became apparent that the desire to liberate the voices of the marginalized participants was, nonetheless, inflected with normative practices that were in danger of appropriating and ventriloquizing those voices. This realization led to an investigation of other ways of creating and presenting learning disabled theatre.
