Découvrir les possibilités du handicap à travers le spectacle socialement engagé

Abstract

To expand Gibson’s concept of affordance, particularly “the possibility of action” (Gibson 1979), I propose considering embodiment as the given psychophysical circumstances before any external interaction between organisms and environments. It investigates how the physically-challenged individuals and ‘theatre novices’ learn to use their body movement and voice as tools to express themselves, and furthermore discover the new affordance of embodiment through the repetition of the training, rehearsal and performance.The research performance I am a Normal Person took place in August and September 2018 in Tainan and Kaohsiung City in Taiwan. Being the director and acting coach, I co-created the performance with the choreographer Yi-Chun Chen, and Chuao Chun who is a theatre novice with Cerebral palsy. I met Chuao Chun in the two-months and cross-disciplinary performance workshops with mix-abilities individuals. I see the performative potential of Chuao Chun’s bodily action through an exercise of falling in the workshop. Then the route from the collapse of movement to the release of emotion was revealed.By using the performance I am a Normal Person, I argue that “trans-pedagogy” and “deskilling”(Helguera 2011) can be the pursuit of the mix-modes of performing that was not recognized as systematic skills of acting and dancing. By the experiment of training and rehearsal methods, the performance discovers new affordances of disability. New affordances transform the performer’s self-image, but also the audience’s perception of the limits and possibilities of disability.Secondly, I argue that disability can be an approach to discover new affordances for theatre and performance making. Embodiment of disability disrupts the convention of theatre: for example what kind of body can be a dancer; what kind of body and voice can be an actor; what kind of skills are needed when the performance welcome uncertainty; what kind of technical supports and standards should theatre have, as well as the division of amateurs and experts, of the audience seats and the stage, and the relationship between audiences and performers.The intersection between disability and theatre can offer each other new routes to break through their social, institutional and historical conventions or stereotypes, invent new affordances, and act as the micro-political movement.