The End of Disability Arts: Theatre, Disability, and the Social Model

Abstract

The companies reviewed in this book are all, to varying degrees, subject to the discourse of disability rights, which has been prevalent in the UK and other parts of the world since the late 70s. This has been an emancipatory process seeking to uncover and dismantle the mechanisms by which all industrial societies operate an ‘ableist’ ideology: that is, the structures of thought and social organisation that validate able-bodiedness and high cognitive functioning as the validating ideal of humanity. In the first part of what follows, I introduce the reader to the changing definitions of learning disability. I then place contemporary performance in the context of identity politics, in particular the type advocated by adherents of the social model of disability and its cultural vanguard, disability arts. The role that theatre has played in the formation of a ‘disability culture’ is analysed, with underlying tensions between theatre as a mechanism for social emancipation and theatre as an art form considered. I conclude this chapter by considering such frameworks in the light of the burgeoning professionalism of theatre involving learning disabled artists and argue that the theories of art and culture based on the social model of disability are inadequate as a means to analyse work of increasing aesthetic complexity. I argue that a paradigm shift has already occurred in practice that is not yet reflected in its analysis.