ABSTRACT
This chapter traces developments of the work of Different Light Theatre including touring overseas, investigating the context and practices of learning disabled theatre in Australia and attempts to develop the company's praxis from a community theatre model to a more conventional dramatic theatre and the limitations that emerged from this approach that led to a deeper and more attentive consideration of the kairos and akroasis of learning disabled theatre. The chapter gives an account of the shift to using only learning disabled actors on stage and increasingly incorporating the input of the learning disabled artists into creative decision-making. As the group sought to pursue working and creative practices that were intended to emancipate the voices of the learning disabled artists, normative processes, and the powers of the disciplinary formations and hierarchies of theatrical representation reiterated themselves. In addition, the development of material by the performers that was becoming increasingly personal and confused the boundaries between character, persona, and personal experience led to explicit or implicit resistance to conventional theatrical processes of giving voice. The ‘issues with theatre’ (Gladwin) experienced by the performers led to an attempt to shift from a model of practice based on the unproblematic dramatizing of lived experience to a model that considered a more complex and reflexive understanding of what constituted performance inside and outside theatre spaces. The chapter has a particular focus on the limitations of dramatic theatre with particular regard to acknowledging different temporalities of devising and performing in the processes of accommodating learning disabled artists to make theatre.
