When Okorn-Kuo Jing Hong began directing a cast with disabilities in the theatre show What If, she wanted the work to respect the performers’ disabilities without trying to cover them up.
Actors who cannot see could orientate themselves by feeling markings on the stage, or the lights could be rigged in such a way that they could feel their heat. A wheelchair could become part of a set, even a projection screen, albeit a small one.
Then along came the COVID-19 pandemic and all their plans had to be thrown out of the window.
Now they had to work out how to remotely guide a blind actor in setting up a camera and framing a shot, or how an actor with cerebral palsy could do warm-up exercises without the help of an access worker during the circuit breaker period.
What If is a commission for the annual M1 Peer Pleasure Youth Theatre Festival, which mentors youth aged 13 to 25 in theatre-making.
The festival was held in August and produced by ArtsWok Collaborative, in collaboration with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. This year’s festival theme is disability.
What If comprised four works that will be performed over Zoom on different days, from Frozen. Broken. Poof!, in which five friends try to celebrate a birthday virtually; to Fetching Sanctuary, an exchange between a blind person and a sound artist in the time of COVID-19.
The festival line-up also includes Riley’s Rain, a sensory-friendly YouTube performance for children on the autism spectrum; and two staged readings by students, If These Wheels Could Speak by Tanjong Katong Girls’ School and The Other People by Dunman High School.
If These Wheels Could Speak director Nur Sahirrah Safit, 32, says the team interviewed people with cerebral palsy to create the story of Natasha, 15 and an aspiring poet who uses a wheelchair.
“As much as their disability is a part of them, it does not define who they are as a person,” she says.
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Source: The Straits Times, 4 August 2020