Translator: Liam Steadman Reviewer: Denise RQ
It will make sense at some point.
I'm Jenny and thank you very, very much for having me here.
I'm deaf, and all deaf people give each other name signs,
so I have to show you my name sign.
Can you follow my instructions? Have I put this on?
Nope, I haven't, so not a good start, is it?
How about now? That's good.
Can you put your right palm on your right nipple?
Left palm on your left nipple. Have a rub - no, no, don't!
(Laughter)
Now, move your palms, so your palms are facing the heavens,
and your little fingers are still touching your nipples.
Now imagine you're carrying something very big and bouncy,
and have a good look at me.
They're not small.
I'm a 34K and, as Bravissimo say, I'm working my way through the alphabet.
So while we're here, can you just think about what would your sign name be?
Your signing frame is from your stomach, it's almost like a TV around your head.
It could be you have long hair, you've got sparkly eyes, you like football,
you're always smiling, you've got dimples.
So just take a split second.
What is the sign representative of you?
I'll count to three, and then we'll just do a mass signing of names
and shout out your names as well.
Ready?
One, two, three! (Audience overlapped responses).
Look, I know it's Saturday afternoon, three o'clock,
we could do a bit better than that!
One, two, three! (Audience overlapped responses).
Fab! So, I'm the Artistic Director of Graeae Theatre Company.
I have my tools.
I have a rose: you throw the rose at the actress you most adore.
An onion: you peel away, you peel away to find your character.
Gaffer tape: no theatre is complete without gaffer.
And nails: to nail those floorboards, nail those flats, that set, everything.
So, the tools of theatre.
Graeae is an awesome theatre company.
It is founded on the Greek myth,
the three Graeae sisters had between them one eye and one tooth
but Perseus stole them, because he wanted to know how to kill the Medusa.
So of course they tell him, but they want their vital organs back.
He doesn't give them back, instead he flings them
and the Graeae sisters are left screaming and defenseless.
As a theatre company Graeae is screaming.
We are screaming with passion to make change.
We are also exactly the same as those Graeae sisters.
We use our eye and our tooth,
we use what we have rather than what we haven't got.
So if someone walks up with no legs,
I'm not going to go and find them some legs,
I just check out how else they move.
It is as simple as that.
Graeae has been evolving over the last 33 years,
not only because we put deaf and disabled people centre-stage,
the work is always political.
It's always theatre that really, really matters and because of that it is always,
as far as I'm concerned, a tool of huge importance and huge influence.
Not just because of our performers,
but also we're curious.
What does access really, really mean?
We've been pioneering creative use of sign language on the stage.
This is usually the furthest I would ever be with an interpreter.
She would normally be right next to me.
We've been looking at creative captioning,
we've been looking
at how does audio description be part of the whole theatrical experience;
It's not something that is just an afterthought,
not something that is just chucked in.
I, maybe it's because I'm a control freak,
I like to know every single essence of access, and how we are going to do it.
And how the art informs the creative process of access,
and how access in itself informs the creative process.
It's all entwined.
Access for me is everything that Graeae does.
And also entwined within that is the word 'evolution,'
the word 'revolution,'
and the word 'revolting.'
Revolting is synonymous with Graeae, I don't know whether that's the right word
but people sometimes think we are nauseating, we're sick,
we're repellent, we're degenerate.
Two years ago, I did a presentation for the Bush Theatre,
and I called it my Bush Provocation.
Take with that what it means, what it will!
Anyway, but in this provocation,
it was a litany of things people have said to my actors.
"Ah, with that arm!" - to a young woman who's an amputee -
"With that arm, we'll never let you on stage."
"Thank God our theatre backstage isn't accessible,
it means we can't have that lot on our stage."
"You're deaf and black. Fuck, you haven't got a hope in this theatre."
"Come back," a drama school said, "come back when you're cured."
A director said to me: "Jenny, people don't come to the theatre to be reminded
of the tragedy of being handicapped."
And very recently, i.e. 2014, we did the Threepenny Opera,
with New Wolsey Theatre, Birmingham Rep,
West Yorkshire Playhouse and Nottingham Playhouse and Graeae.
It was wicked, it was fantastic!
But when we were trying to evaluate,
asking the audiences about the show, some people said:
"Oh, I arrived, and there were all these disabled people in and around,
and I thought maybe I had come on the wrong night,
it was a show just for the disabled by the disabled."
"Oh, if I'd known that it was going to be performed by disabled performers,
I might not have bothered to come."
2014, and we still have that.
Do we question Stephen Hawking?
Do we question Stephen Hawking, that he is a genius, a scientist, he is awesome?
Do we question David Weir, wheelchair racer?
Do we question Ellie Simmonds, power swimmer?
Do we question David Blunkett?
You may not agree with David Blunkett's politics,
but did we question his ability as a blind man to be a politician?
No.
So why do we question actors on stage?
Their right to be centre-stage, why do we question that?
TV, I suppose, is evolving.
We've got Lisa Hammond on Eastenders,
we've got Cheryl Houston on Coronation Street,
Lizz Carr on Silent Witness, Cerrie who's on CBeebies.
But, oh my God, when she was on CBeebies, hell broke out!
Our children are going to be traumatized
by seeing a woman with one arm on stage, or on television.
Casting, I'm sorry, has not evolved in the way that I think it should.
So, these become the tools of casting, and the disabled experience.
We are like petals, fragile because of constant discrimination.
But oh, my God, we have thorns
because we dare put ourselves on that stage.
We're like an onion, but somebody else has peeled us away and exposed us.
We need gaffer to wrap around those wounds of bruises and cruel words.
And nails, it is always another nail in the coffin.
When there is a role, it is a disabled character,
but even then, we don't get cast in that.
A non-disabled person will crip up and play that role.
And another bloody nail is when...
how many Oscars are awarded to those actors that do crip up?
The tools of casting.
Shakespeare.
When I was headhunted for the National Theatre of Scotland job,
- "Wow, oh my God," I thought, "this is incredible." -
first question was: "Jenny, I know you're the Artistic Director of Graeae,
but if you were to work with a normal theatre,
would you still be wanting to audition deaf and disabled people,
and if so, why?"
(Groans)
Shakespeare doesn't say whether Juliet was or was not a wheelchair user.
I've had a deaf Juliet, I've had a blind Prospero,
I've had a wheelchair user who was Miranda,
I've had a woman playing Caliban.
Theatre is about throwing it all up in the air, getting it messy.
It's a brilliant, brilliant thing to do, it just requires a bit of imagination.
And, oh my God, how brilliant it is
when someone rocks up and they have a different voice pattern
and you're thinking about access, you're thinking about their access,
access for audience, access for that character?
How much richer is the world in which I inhabit for people out there?
I love casting, and I work with a wealth of actors.
These are just some people Graeae works with.
I've had an all disabled cast for Bent, an all disabled cast for Blasted.
Look at her, how sweet is she? This lot deserve to be everywhere.
Why can't we have Mat Fraser as Doctor Who?
Or, what about Leslie who's really revolutionary,
have a young disabled woman as Doctor Who?
Why can't we have one of my favourite actors, Nadia,
who the National Theatre said they couldn't have because of her arm?
Why can't she be in a cherry orchard? Why can't she be Juliet?
Why are this lot not everywhere?
I'm proud that I work with these people,
and I know Stevie will talk about her Candoco performers,
she's proud that she works with them as well.
We work with people that nobody else wants, it's brilliant.
At the moment, my big "if only" is...
A casting request came through to Graeae on Thursday.
Steven Spielberg is looking for a young woman
to play the lead in the Big Friendly Giant.
We have two young wheelchair users as part of our youth theatre.
Robyn, she's stocky, she's got glasses,
she’s a wheely, oh, my gosh she's dangerous!
You really have to watch your feet when she's around.
She's a glorious young woman.
And then, Evie, not quite as robust, but she's got that sparkle, she's cheeky.
If only Spielberg would think:
"Yes, yes I can see beyond the normal sort of casting,
these girls are good," and give one of them a role.
In the stadium for the opening ceremony of the Paralympics
we had Spasticus Autisticus belting out
in front of a 40-foot statue of Alison Lapper,
Marc Quinn's statue, Alison Lapper Pregnant.
Limbless, woman, defiant, it was heaven.
67,000 people in that stadium singing Spasticus Autisticus
and then "I am what I am".
I was in heaven. We were glorious.
The whole artistic festival that happened afterwards, the sports itself,
there never has been such a time to say, "we're good."
And Channel 4 said, "Thank you for the warm up."
They embraced us for a split second.
How can I be asking our artistic directors,
our filmmakers, all of those people, to join me in the revolution of casting,
when Channel 4 then pull the rug from under us?
They contacted me, they phoned!
I'm deaf, I don't use the phone, hello!
Anyway, so then, they emailed me, and they said:
"Jenny, what a fantastic show.
You must have met
some wonderful professional deaf and disabled artists and volunteers.
Please, please, can you suggest people for..."
- I'm thinking: "Oh my God, here we go,
here is the moment where my art is going to be really everywhere!" -
"please can you suggest people
for our fantastic new programme, The Undateables."
Have any of you seen it? It's sick.
It's car-crash television. It's insulting.
It takes the most vulnerable deaf and disabled people
and just smacks them in there
to be vilified, to be looked at, and to be laughed at.
It's disgusting.
There's that,
and this might be the last time I ever do a speech like this.
I want us to evolve, I want how Graeae use the aesthetics of access to evolve.
I want it to influence a whole generation of theatre-makers.
But I might not have a job anymore because Access to Work,
which is the government fund,
so that I can have Madeline as my interpreter,
and Jen who's over here, who's an interpreter and prompter
when I get a bit stuck...
I have my interpreters for rehearsals, for meetings, for stuff,
the Department of Work and Pensions pay them.
A lot of my actors also use the Independent Living Fund,
so that they have PA support
for bath and food, holding a script, for line feeding.
Brilliant, brilliant resources,
and we could not have done 2012 without those resources.
But suddenly, they're being cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
So from the 35 hours a week entitlement, I'm now told I can have 72 hours a month.
I fought that, so I've got some of my hours back,
but I got an email this morning
from a young woman who's just left university, just got her first job.
She was awarded six days a week, she's been doing that for a year.
She's now just recently moved job.
They've given her six hours a week, not six hours a day.
She's had to quit her job.
So, tools of a revolution.
Nails: nails to nail my feet down to the ground.
Gaffer: to tie me up by the railings.
Onions: I mean, I never could facilitate tears,
but I have been crying so much about this whole debacle
around Access to Work and my fight to keep Graeae
and other disabled companies, like Candoco, fighting this battle.
I don't have any more tears.
But I will put the rose in my mouth,
I will be defiant.
And Access to Work will not fight this battle,
you will all join me in this revolution to ensure that theatre does evolve
because theatre is crucial for each and every one of us,
because it is about our mental health and wellbeing,
it's about our emotions and intelligence.
It's about articulating feelings.
And if theatre is taken away from us, from disabled people -
- it's not going to happen, so don't worry -
but please do go on 'Stop the Changes' it's a petition around Access to Work,
please make a noise, and please join me in twittering and twattering,
and get that bloody awful programme Undateables cut, gone forevermore.
And on that note,
thank you very much for listening to me burble, and join me.
(Applause)