Extant: Resistance

1 January 2005

Extant are the only blind theatre company in the UK. Over the past few years they have been developing new styles to create access for blind performers and audiences alike. Colin Hambrook takes a look at their remarkable achievement.

Promotional image for Extant Theatre

Experimental work-in-progress The Next Stage was performed nearly two years ago at Jackson's Lane Theatre in London. Extant took a bold step, exploring two main issues. The first was around stage-craft for blind performers. This looked primarily at developing physical performance styles derived from blind peoples natural ways of negotiating the world.

The second main theme explored how audio-description is used in a theatrical context. Audio description is often at the bottom of the list of theatre venues priorities. With some discernment it can be an exciting way of accessing theatre, but can equally, often be dry and add little to the comprehension or appreciation of the story. Access to theatre for blind and visually impaired people is under-developed and under-resourced. So this was an exciting venture allowing Extant to break new ground in attempting to create audio-description within the body of the script. Usually it consists of a live commentary delivered to the audience via head-sets.

And there was light

After developing a script based on the true life experiences of several historical blind figures - writer Maria Oshodi concentrated on the story of the blind French Resistance leader, Jacques Lusseyran. In his autobiography And There Was Light, Jacques tells the tale of how he became a teenage member of the French Resistance. He was subsequently captured by the Nazis, interrogated and incarcerated in Buchenwald concentration camp. Jacques managed to use his blindness as a foil, exposing the prejudices of the Nazi SS. They couldn't believe a blind man capable.

Adapted for the stage, Resistance uses physical theatre, experimental dance and live audio description. Performed by 6 professional blind and visually impaired actors, Resistance unfolds with a tense and exciting narrative. The action flicks between time, perceptions and perspectives to uncover the deep mystery at its heart. Through his blindness, Jacques becomes aware of a deeper perceptual awareness of the world.

Resistance tours nationally Until October 2005; visiting over 20 venues. See the tour page for details.
Find out more on the Extant website

Interview with Maria Oshodi

Close-up of the face of actor Mark Scales, with a strong silhouette on the left of the photo

Mark Scales as Jacques Lusseyran. Photo by Nik Mackey

Writer Maria Oshodi told dao where her ideas and inspiration for Resistance came from.

I have been reading a few fictional, autobiographical, and philosophical texts by blind writers over the last few years. I was interested in exploring different ideas and experiences of blind people to discover whether there was a potential for bringing these together artistically.

At first I tried to combine several story lines with that of Jacques Lusseyran's, in what I hoped would form one piece for the stage. However, after exploring this approach, I decided to unweave and leave the other story ideas and just focus on adapting the Lusseyran story for the stage. Strangely, in searching for a way to turn the episodic events in the book into a more theatrical narrative, I found that some of the ideas in the other stories I had dropped managed to find their way back in, purely through the telling of the Lusseyran story.

One of the original aims I had was to develop a narrative style within the play that was akin to an experience of blindness. I realised that this was emerging as I concentrated on the task in hand of adapting the autobiography. As the drafts of the play developed, so did the retrospective, fragmented quality within it. And so did my consciousness of this being reflective of the delayed way in which blind people access and piece together information, especially that of the visual world.

Audio-descriptive techniques?

We want the production to build in live access of the visual elements of the play, for visually impaired audiences, delivered by the actors on stage. Usually access for visually impaired audiences happens through technical means, organised externally as an add on to rehearsals by sighted audio describers situated off-stage and feeding information directly through headsets. However, our aim is to create an accessible piece of theatre for visually impaired audiences, that does not require this interference.

We involved a visually impaired consultancy group during rehearsals to advise on how the access can work in a live context with regards this particular play. So far, the feedback is to keep it as minimal as possible and let the imagination do the work, with a little help here and there. We want to create theatre in which a sighted audience might not even think access was present. However, for a visually impaired audience, a subtle reference is all it needs to make all the difference in understanding of staging etc.

Blind in Theatre

Work in the Blind in Theatre field has just begun. There is potential for challenging, creative and inexpensive accessible theatre performance to be invented, that does not compromise the artistic nature of a piece. It just takes a willingness from mainstream theatre to be open to an alternative approach, which can result in exploration of a new theatrical landscape.

Resistance - a review

A close-up of Mark Scales and Gerard Mcdermott playing as Jacques Lusseyran and his nazi interrogater

Mark Scales and Gerard Mcdermott in Resistance. Photo by Nik Mackey

Written by Maria Oshodi and directed by Eileen Dillon, Resistance explores the evolution of Jacques Lusseyran as a teenage hero of the French Resistance. Joe McConnell went along to the opening night to review the performance by Extant.

The portrayal of the central character is shared by two actors: Mark Scales makes his stage debut as the younger Lusseyran, while John Wilson Goddard plays the older man. It is through the interplay of these two parts that the play's powerfully developed central theme emerges: the transformation of blindness as loss into that of an unequivocal celebration of blindness as another powerful, liberating and equally valid way of visioning the world.

Sound like light passed right through me.
I entered a world of enchantment, which supported my life, nourishing me because it was real.

Rights

Throughout this multi-layered work, the writing skilfully avoids the dusty clichés that could have accumulated around a tale of heroism and the Resistance. The parallel between the oppression of the fascist occupation and society's denial of the rights of blind people is compellingly drawn. Through one act and epilogue, the action of the play tracks backward and forward from a central point of reference in time: Lusseyran's interrogation and torture at the hands of the Gestapo (chillingly represented by the General as played by Gerard McDermott). The resulting fragmentation enriches the structure of the play by avoiding linear chronology and allowing different time frames to comment upon each other. The lines delivered by the older Jacques in the epilogue evoking the liberation of awareness through blindness are stunning in their eloquence.

The play renders a very strong piece of dramatic storytelling boldly using physical theatre and embedded with devices, which deliver elements of audio description integral to the dialogue and not as an external bolt-on. However, I have to admit to being left wondering as to whether every visual element had been conveyed in some way or another by the end of the piece. Had choices been made which decided that some elements were not essential?

Pioneering work

The set centres on two sparsely constructed mobile towers of scaffolding. Around, through and upon these structures, the choreography and performances achieve a fluidity of movement, which is nearly always impressive and exhilarating. This is a strong testament to the unstinting pioneering work of Extant in researching and developing performance and stagecraft techniques for blind and visually impaired performers. The choreography includes a sequence where the actors surreally jive with one another as they furtively build their clandestine resistance cell. This was exciting and effective but all too short and left you longing for more of this kind of experimental dance approach to be included in the mix.

On a few occasions, the actors' voices are overwhelmed by the pre-recorded score (composed by Adrian Lee) which otherwise added another well-crafted dimension to the production. But this was the opening night and should be easy to adjust eventually.

While the play is highly satisfying and compelling on an intellectual level, it sometimes comes across as less than emotionally engaging. The actors often have to deliver quite wordy passages in a rather hyper-real way in order to fill the audience in with background information. The depth of the themes and issues within Resistance were riveting. However, a few anti-heroic elements would have presented a more fully rounded portrayal of Lusseyran and would have made it easier to empathise on a human level.

Resistance - Tour Details

September

Darlington Arts Centre. DL3 7AX
The Paul Robeson Theatre, Hounslow TW3 1ES
Nottingham Arts Theatre. NG1 3BE
Dorton House School (RLSB)

Square Chapel Centre for the Arts, Halifax HX1 1QG

October

ADAPEI des Yvelines, Versailles, France
Chateau Amphitheatre, Lycée International, Paris, France
Blind in Theatre (BIT) Festival, Zagreb, Croatia
The Albany, Deptford, London. SE8 4AG

Further details

contact:

Shaun Dawson
Turtle Key Arts
Ladbroke Hall, 79 Barlby Road
London W10 6AZ
Tel: 020 8964 5060
Fax:020 8964 4080

shaun@turtlekeyarts.org.uk
www.turtlekeyarts.org.uk

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