The performance of disability histories: remembrance and transmission

The purpose of this innovative workshop programme is to explore the performance of disabled people's lived experiences. The inspiration is drawn from recorded and transcribed interviews arising from a current life history project, in which the principal applicant (herself a disabled woman) has been collecting the reminiscences of three generations of disabled people who grew up in Britain durign the post-war period. This research provides elements of stimulus material from recordings and transcripts, which will be prepared by the applicants and their theatre practitioner partners Diverse City. Three workshops, involving academics and practitioners, will facilitate dialogue and a process devising a micro-performance (or proto-play). By engaging creatively as well as critically with oral remembrances and embodied histories of disability, the workshops explore the boundaries and ambiguities of textual and non-textual meaning. Each workshop will involve academic input, practitioner input, and devised performance work. Audio, visual and textual material will be generated and edited into a short video work for Internet distribution. The workshops are intended to pilot collaborative work towards a larger project application in 2009 to create a performance piece for schools to faciltiate the tranmission of disabled people's remembrances to new generation audiences.