This podcast episode features an interview with Mairi Taylor, discussing accessibility in theatre, collaboration, and the challenge of retaining knowledge to sustain disability inclusion efforts.
Transcript
Mariana: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the DARCI podcast, the podcast on disability, accessibility, and representation in the creative industries. My name is Mariana López and I’m a professor in sound production and post-production at the School of Arts and Creative Technologies at the University of York. And today I have the pleasure of welcoming Mairi Taylor. Mairi is Executive Director at Birds of Paradise Theatre Company, BOP, working across the company’s theatre, development and strategic strands, from producing award-winning creatively accessible theatre to designing and delivering consultation, training and projects that aim to address access and disability equality in the arts. Mairi has been working in this area of the arts for over 20 years in a wide range of roles and contexts. Mairi originally studied fine art at Oxford and then Dundee and hopes that one day she might have time to be in the studio again.
Mariana: Mairi, thank you so much for joining us for today’s podcast episode. How are you doing today?
Mairi: I’m good, thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
Mariana: So let’s get started with some questions about your amazing work. And let’s start with something really easy. How did you get started in the field of accessibility and representation in theatre? And what is your role within Birds of Paradise?
Mairi: So currently I am the Executive Director at Birds Paradise Theatre Company based in Glasgow in Scotland. And this means, my role means that I work across everything that the company does. We’re kind of big and mighty and do a lot but as far as people go we’re kind of small and sleek. So you know we have three strands, we work across theatre work, making theatre development work, supporting next generation of disabled artists and theatre makers and then strategic work where we house a lot of our training and consultation work. And I work across all of these areas, so I suppose I have a creative input through to doing much drier things like supporting other arts organisations to think about their EDI plans and things like that. When I set out in the direction towards this job, like lots of people, I wasn’t necessarily heading straight for it. I didn’t know that’s where I was going to end up. I trained originally in fine art. I did a couple of arts degrees, but I always had a fair lack of confidence about making a living as an artist. And it was actually I was at a sort of careers talk when I was doing my Master’s, various organisations were invited in. It was actually pitched at undergraduates. I was on a Master’s course at this point and there was no undergraduates there. I think maybe when you’re an undergraduate, you aren’t worried about your career, but later on you are. And so I was turning up to these undergraduate talks to try and work out what it was I could do to make a living. And there was an arts accessibility mental health project that came and spoke about the work they were doing. And it was the first thing that, first time somebody talked about a project and talked about an organisation that really sparked a light bulb in me. And so I started volunteering for them. And after my period of study, and when I was starting to find employment, it was volunteering for mental health charities and organisations that were really looking at accessibility in the arts that I started to be interested in and be involved in. And that work just built up over the years and eventually led me to making theatre and so thinking about art that is produced as well as art that is consumed and currently doing that with Birds of Paradise.
Mariana: Thank you so much. And it’s really good to hear that those career talks can be useful. [both laughing]
Mairi: Yes, I know. It’s a validating moment. Clearly not useful for any of the undergraduates, but I was a grateful recipient.
Mariana: But it’s really interesting because so much effort is put in those talks to showcase different careers. So it’s really good that you found inspiration in that talk. So that’s really nice. I’m sure everybody listening that organises career talks is going to be really happy. [both laughing]
Mairi: Well, it was a genuine light bulb spark of a moment for me where I could see an alignment between what I was studying and a creative practice and actually making a living and finding an area to work in. So I was always grateful for that moment. And that was an organization called, I think they were called Arts Advocacy that was working out in Dundee at the time, I don’t think they exist anymore. I’ll always be grateful for that moment.
Mariana: Oh, thank you so much. What a lovely story. And in addition to the extensive experience you have in theatre, you have also done work with galleries and museums. And I was wondering, how is this work similar or different to working in theatre, accessibility and representation? Are there any similarities, differences?
Mairi: I think there are both. I think it’s interesting. I think the relationship that galleries and museums have with their audience is slightly different. It’s different to the relationship that theatre venues and theatre companies have with their audience. And therefore, whatever you the experience that you’re creating for that audience and the work that you’re making for that audience and then how you think about making that accessible does vary and there’s different approaches. I think from working in galleries and museums, it’s often a much more curated and individual experience, potentially, where accessibility is maybe more traditionally dealt with through events programming or projects, rather than thinking about the experience of every single member of the audience that comes in and, you know, we use the phrase in theatres, “bums on seats”, you know, you’ve got an individual coming in and having a time-bound fixed experience. They’ve bought a ticket, they’re turning up, they’re sitting down, they’re having this experience. So I suppose it’s all about making that experience as accessible as possible, but because they’re different contexts, different environments, different art forms, the way you go about that can be quite different.
Mairi: I think I remember coming from being quite focused on galleries and museums and then moving more into the theatre world and being quite interested in how at that time I felt sometimes that maybe venues and theatre companies were less engaged in what the individual experience of that audience member was when it came to access than maybe a gallery or museum was. And I think that’s the nature of how engagement can happen. You know, if you’re engaging with an audience through a gallery or museum context, and it’s through an events programme, or it’s through, you know, there’s much, there’s conversation, you’re meeting people, you’re getting to know each other, and you’re getting to learn from each other. Whereas in a theatre environment, that is much more tricky.
Mairi: You’re, you know, you may be dealing with a really large audience, and if you’re a big venue, you’re sort of processing people through it, and you want everybody to have as good a experience as possible. And there isn’t the same scope to slow down and have a conversation about what that person is actually experiencing. So I think, yeah, it’s the different environments, it’s the different ways that the art forms are experienced by that audience member.
Mariana: Well, thank you so much. That’s really, really interesting. And I was wondering, what is one of the most exciting projects you have had the opportunity to work on, and what made it special?
Mairi: That’s a very challenging, I find that a very challenging question.
Mariana: That’s why I said it’s one of. [both laughing]
Mairi: One of, yeah. I suppose, you’re really lucky working in theatre because obviously every project’s completely different. And there is a sort of, the thing that you’re most wedded to is your most recent project. And often because you’re still recovering from the adrenaline it produced. And so I think I would talk immediately about a project that we just completed, a big element of it, which was an international commission through the unlimited commissioning strand.
Mairi: We were in Kathmandu in Nepal in March to realize making a piece of work that we’d been working on for quite a few months, bringing together disabled artists in Nepal and in Scotland to share stories, which ultimately got developed and worked up into a script, which was rehearsed and performed in Kathmandu at the MIPFest International Theatre Festival. And it was a very exciting project and very enjoyable project, very hard work, because as with a lot of these things, not enough time and not quite enough resource. But it was very exciting to collaborate. That’s always a massive element of working in the theatres, the joy of collaboration and what that brings.
Mairi: But I think bringing two cultures together and really trying to explore making work accessible, taking our knowledge around some of our creative access practices and exploring them in a completely new context and introducing them to performers and writers and directors who hadn’t necessarily experienced access being thought about in that way. And doing things like placing the sign language interpreter within the body of the play, which is not something that’s traditionally done there. So just having these little moments of being able to take our knowledge and skill that’s built up over the years and say, “Hey, an experiment with this and then see where you can take it. I think that’s a lot of what working around access is really about, is the scope for experimentation and discovering that there’s not one approach to everything. There isn’t some secret checklist that if you’ve got it, you’ve solved it. It really is about trying and testing things, especially when you’re working within an art form. So that’s the most recent projects and probably one of the most exciting that I’ve been involved in.
Mariana: Oh, that sounds really exciting. And something that you were explaining just occurred to me. So you talked about how there was an opportunity to bring all the work you do on creative accessibility and creative approaches to accessibility to the team at Kathmandu. But was there also things that the team was already doing that you thought, actually, this is really good to bring back to our own practices?
Mairi: Yeah, I think we’re very aware as a company, especially when we’ve worked in international context, that there’s the danger that there’s a feeling that we’re exporting, exporting our knowledge and there isn’t an exchange taking place. And we were very keen to be mindful of that in that project specifically.
Mairi: And that’s why we took a lot of time developing relationships ahead of going out. And really building that project out of the relationship between the artists in Nepal and the artists in Scotland and really being led by the conversations and what they shared. So I feel in a way it’s not for me to comment, in a sense it generated out of their collaboration and I think what was really interesting was that they shared a lot of stories about their experience of being a disabled person in the world and in their context. And I think on both sides they were quite surprised to learn about each other’s experiences because on both sides, and that sounds very binary, but you know there was assumptions being made about what it meant to be disabled in Nepal, what it to be disabled in Scotland. And actually, the balance within that was not necessarily always what people would assume it would be. I think some of the artists in Nepal, for instance, shocked to discover the discrimination that some disabled people experience in the education system in Scotland, for instance, where they thought, oh, it’s going to be better there. You know, and then I think some of the artists in Scotland were shocked to discover some of the positive and affirming experiences that were happening in Nepal because I think they thought because their assumptions about what that society was going to be was going to mean it was going to be harder to be disabled there. So it’s really quite fascinating when you can create a project that has the space to have genuine exchange and conversations what is unearthed. And I think we pulled that forward into the play and into the narrative of the play, which actually imagined a new planet, not in a sense of something too science fiction based, but they discovered that actually if they could conjure up a world together that was addressing the issues on our current planet, what would that new world look like? And that became the basis of the play.
Mariana: Oh, thank you so much. That sounds really, really lovely.
Mariana: And it kind of shows how important those conversations are so that we don’t get stuck with our own assumptions as to what other people’s experiences are. It’s absolutely lovely.
Mairi: Absolutely.
Mariana: And I think we missed the name of the play at some point. So what’s the title?
Mairi: The play is called “New Normal” and I cannot, I would not risk telling you what it is in Nepali. [both laughing]
Mairi: It will be available to view at some point. We’re currently editing a film, so there will be a version that we will be sharing. It will have a BSL interpreted version, an NSL interpreted version. There’ll be versions that are captioned, both in Nepali and in English, and there will be versions that have audio description embedded in them as well, again in Nepali and in English. There’s going to be quite a few different versions. It’s very interesting, trying to make something accessible when you’re also working across languages, it is an interesting layer to add in as well.
Mariana: Perfect, and when it becomes available, where people can find this? In the Birds of Paradise website? Would that be a good place to look?
Mairi: That would probably be the easiest place to jump to straight away and then we’re hoping the project will have its own website where the films will be held, but probably visiting BOP’s website would be the quickest way to find out.
Mariana: Oh perfect, and I have to, this is out of curiosity really, just because you mentioned different languages, so is the performance in a multi-language performance?
Mairi: So we had aspirations originally that it would be bilingual, but that was going to just be far too challenging for lots of different reasons. So it is performed, the spoken language is Nepali, but we have a series of stories embedded within it, some of which are in English, because some of the stories are written by the artists who took part in the original development project.
Mairi: So where we have, where it’s a story or piece written by one of the Scottish artists, it’s in English, it was pre-recorded in English, but in the live theatre production there were then also English and Nepali captions within the production, and then it was sign language interpreted in NSL for that audience in Kathmandu. So it was bilingual through the captions in Kathmandu. So that was the way it functioned, but it was performed in spoken Nepali, Nepali sign language, except where we had pre-recorded stories which were in English.
Mariana: Oh perfect, thank you so much. I can see why you chose this as an example, it’s a great example. [both laughing] And just building a little bit on that, but kind of thinking about, of course, Birds of Paradise, as you say, very much specialises in accessible theatre and representation.
Mariana: But I was wondering, what do you feel theatre makers not specialising in disability need to know about accessibility and representation? And how do you think they can work to provide wider representation and more accessible productions?
Mairi: I think that’s a very, it’s a very big question because there’s so much in there, that it’s quite challenging to answer. [both laughing]
Mairi: I suppose if we take the two main things, one being representation and thinking about who you’re working with, what are the stories you’re telling, of course, in a way that really comes down to thinking about involvement, authorship, ensuring you’re casting well, and practices which I think are much more collectively understood now than say they were even 10 years ago. But being mindful if you are including a disabled character in something, you know, who is playing them? Why is that character disabled? Are they there because it’s fulfilling some plot device?
Mairi: Or is there something going on where you really are wanting an authentic voice? Are you then involving a disabled person in that? So it’s really going back to the principles of the disability rights movement. You know, nothing about us without us. It’s really thinking that through and holding on to that.
Mairi: And as far as accessibility goes, I suppose it’s just always testing and questioning how many people are able to actually access what you’re doing. I think trying to… I suppose trying to make thinking about access a habitual thing, I mean if I had the answer to how to do that I wouldn’t still be doing what I’m doing. [both laughing]
Mairi: I think there was a point in time where I thought that the work that we’re doing and the questions we are having would peter out because, you know, everybody would understand and get it and embrace access and embrace disability justice and thinking about these things in all the areas of the work. But I think we all realise that we’re in an ever-changing world and constantly knowledge gets eroded and practices get eroded and there is the need to keep talking about how to do these things to do them well.
Mairi: I would say that now, from my experience, you’re no longer needing to convince people of the need to make things accessible or the need to think about representation properly. I think that will and the engagement with these two areas is there. I think sometimes now it’s just the confidence and the practicality of how, how do we do that? And I think in a way that becomes about, less about knowledge in some ways and more about confidence or having people realise that there is not necessarily one way to do everything, that you’ve really got to interrogate what you’re doing, how you’re making work and find your own ways through making it accessible.
Mairi: So that I suppose you’re more likely to get excited about what you’re doing, learn from it. You’re more likely to continue doing it rather than this feeling that there’s, again, this mysterious secret checklist. If only I had this checklist or that toolkit or this bit of information, then I’d be able to do it. I think it’s much more a case of looking at what it is you’re doing, whether it’s running an event, making a piece of work, whatever it is, whatever your activity or practice is, and thinking about how you flex what you’re doing and you can increase accessibility within it in a way that is doable, is achievable, and that you can learn from.
Mariana: Yeah, I really like what you said about finding that excitement as well, and I think a lot of, as you were talking about the checklist, I think as well, maybe not that much in theatre, definitely in film and television, there has been so much focus sometimes on guidelines on how to do this, that, that I think it kind of people start seeing it as well, we have to do this rather than this is an exciting journey we’re all going through and we’re going to find a new way of doing this.
Mariana: And theatre feels a little bit, but correct me if I’m wrong, to me, theatre always has always felt a bit freer in that sense than other forms of media like, like, of creative industries like film and television. Do you find that’s the case?
Mairi: I’m not sure. I mean, possibly. We maybe have in some cases, you know, I don’t know the film and television world very well. But so I’m grossly oversimplifying here. But if I was to try and comment on it, I would say maybe our budgets are smaller. We’re still sometimes a little bit more winging it and experimenting. You know, like the pressure on us, you know, there is pressure and strain within theatre making and the way we’re, you know, the funding landscape and all of these things, but we’re maybe not, we’re not quite got that kind of like per day cost that the film and TV industry has, you know, we don’t quite have the same bottom lines and it’s much more still in a room together, making something that is then, usually ultimately, a live experience. So it’s different. It is different and allows maybe us to experiment slightly more and have a, as you may be picking up on a degree of more freedom. I think, you know, BOP is very privileged in that this is a big part of what we do. So we will, it’s often the starting point is, you know, yes, there’s this exciting creative idea. Next question is how do we make it accessible?
Mairi: How do we build that into the form, which, you know, that is our ultimate freedom to focus in that direction. But I do think you’re picking up on something that I imagine there’s less leeway in film and TV, because I imagine the bottom line is, what do they say about the bottom line? It’s bigger, it’s smaller, it’s tighter, I don’t know. [both laughing]
Mariana: Yeah, absolutely, really, really interesting. And kind of going on on that theme, I was wondering, what do you think are the biggest barriers faced by the sector, the theatre sector or the creative industries more widely, in its journey to be more accessible and to provide more career paths for disabled people?
Mairi: I think from the point of view of accessibility, I think a big challenge is just building on has been learned in the past and retaining that. A bit like, sort of talk about, you know, organizational knowledge. We have to say, you know, when you work with an arts organization, it has often been the case that it’s one champion within it or one individual within it.
Mairi: That could be the same, maybe, you know, in a university or in a TV company where there’s somebody who sort of takes this on as a passion and understands it and tries to drive forward better practice. But then that individual moves on and that knowledge is lost. And I think we sort of suffer from that across the whole sector in a way where the knowledge somehow doesn’t get retained and built on. Although I would say that, you know, as a culture and society as a whole, that’s the problem with human beings is we don’t really learn. [both laughing] So how do you retain it and build on it? I do think money and resources comes into it in a way, not as an excuse, but it is a challenge. If you have that sitting beside the fact that the organizational knowledge shifts, then you don’t have it sitting in budget, so you don’t have it ingrained. There’s nothing to speak to it. So you do need the policies and the guidelines and the budget lines. You do need all of that to try and keep the fact that it should be thought about alive.
Mairi: As far as thinking about representation within the arts, within the sector, I think at all levels, it’s very difficult for disabled people to still find their way and find the pathways. And unfortunately, that’s because the barriers exist in an ongoing way for disabled people, from the get go in accessing education, training, employment, et cetera. We know now that things are far better than they were in the sense that people have a right to education now, they have a right to employment, but how that actually plays out in the real world does not necessarily speak to us being in a progressive place. We all too often are encountering individuals who found it challenging to stay on a course at college or university, or have been rejected or been told… In the last few weeks, we’ve had a conversation with somebody who’s been told that they can’t do part of their uni course because it’s not accessible to them and they just can’t do it. And so if you’re hitting that, still happening, it’s a real challenge. Birds of Paradise set up 30 years ago to think about creating opportunities for disabled people in Glasgow who wanted to become actors because there was no way of training as an actor, let alone thinking about getting on a professional stage. 30 years later, you know, we are making work that is on main stages. You know, it’s written by, made by, produced by, performed by disabled people. But one of the areas where we are we’re still encountering barriers and lack of representation is in backstage and offstage roles and we’ve just launched a project, a three-year project looking exactly at that.
Mairi: Funded by Esme Fairburn, we’re looking at a three-year project across Scotland looking at that, the barriers that exist for disabled people to follow up on careers in that area and in the technical roles and production roles. So that’s, you know, we’re still finding that there’s work to be done. And the way to move that on, I think, is just to is to work collectively and identify those barriers. And I would say, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, a project like that probably would have been very small and niche. And BOT, you know, BOT might have been doing it in a corner. What is beautiful and has moved on is the fact that we are able to launch this in a big way. And you know, we’ve got partners from across the sector in Scotland, from National Theatre of Scotland, Eden Court up in Inverness, big venues who all really want to try and tackle this area. So that buy-in and the fact that there is a collective desire to address these barriers does give hope that we can move things forward and improve things in a way that we wouldn’t have had the scale or scope to do at other points.
Mariana: Well, thank you so much. That sounds so exciting. And it made me think as you were talking, what do you think are the reasons why there is this difference between roles and how accessible they are to disabled people? So why do you think that this backstage roles have been less accessible for people wanting to work in them?
Mairi: I think it’s just because it’s seen so much as being, these are jobs which are seen as being quite physical. They are jobs that are within certain environments which are possibly are inaccessible. There’s very few lighting rigs or sound booths or technical areas that are actually accessible from a sort of level access point of view.
Mairi: So I think lots of theatres are very old, Victorian buildings, there’s been lots of practical things. But then also I think there’s layers of assumption and ableism there, which is not really thought about. This is kind of, well, that job’s not the job for you because it involves going up a ladder. So, well, you just can’t. But we do know now that we can be flexible and work in all sorts of different ways now that these jobs should not be discounted. And if someone is interested in working in a certain area and contributing to it, maybe the challenge is not so much about that individual than about the environment and the way the job is done. And can we explore ways that we can make it accessible? But I think that’s where that’s maybe why it’s one of the last areas, is just that the culture of it being a job that is an idea and an expectation of who does that job and how they do it. Which at one point was probably, I’m assuming, also very gendered. So there’s all sorts of areas that have shifted and moved over time. And I think that once we can show them that there is different ways of addressing the access within those contexts, I think we might be able to make inroads into improving things.
Mairi: I think also in theatre, like lots of areas of life, whether we’re aware of it or not, there’s that sense of “oh, but this is how a thing is done”. [both laughing] And I think I’m quite a fan of acknowledging that that’s, you know, as much as anything, it’s just that that’s a construct. Yes, there’s practice and traditions and there’s a reason why things are built in a certain way. But also, it’s okay to question that and to try and change how you do it.
Mairi: And I think from the point of view of being accessible and genuinely including disabled people in working environments, there has to be more flexibility and an acknowledgement that often the rigidity of, oh, but you can’t do it because we do it like this. Well, you have to question the we do it like this a little bit harder.
Mariana: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, as you say, sometimes when you go back enough in time and explore how certain conventions came about, the reasons why those things were established in a certain way just no longer make sense. And then, yeah, it’s better to change them.
Mairi: They come from a different, often they come from a different era, don’t they?
Mariana: Yeah, yeah.
Mairi: And once you get back to that and think about it, I remember reading the anecdote, I think it was of Harriet Harman, maybe getting into the Houses of Parliament and realising that all the seating was a certain height because it was all designed for certain height and depth because it was all designed for men that were sitting on it. And sort of realising that literally the environment was built for a group of human beings that had completely dominated and it’s like, well, actually, we need to change this now. We’re not all six foot two.
Mariana: Yeah, and I think so well, as you say, about constantly questioning ourselves and why we do things. I think a kind of a simple example for me is when you go to events and people refuse to use a microphone, even though there is one available for them to use. And it’s like, “Oh, I don’t need it. I can project.” And surely that might well be true. But if it is there and it will provide access to others, then we just need to change how we present. And that’s absolutely fine.
Mairi: I think it’s challenging for people. I’ve noticed over the years that there is this sort of light bulb moment that some individuals need to go through and realize that their experience is not, you know, how they experience the world is not the way that everybody does. And I think, you know, most people would be quite annoyed and feel quite challenged if you pointed that out to them. But the reality is we all only experience the world from our own perspective and unless we’ve had experiences where maybe for a while we’ve had to experience something differently or we’ve had to work with somebody who experiences things differently or or a friend or a partner, you know, we need to have had our perspective shifted enough to like properly understand and even I always tell the anecdote of there was a woman I worked with years and years ago when I was first working around captioning in theatre in Scotland. And she was one of my sort of good guys who was really supportive and really, really understood, you know, the need for captioning and was a real advocate for it. Because when captioning first came to Scotland, there was a challenge around trying to explain that you needed to caption and have BSL interpretation that these were two different things, you know, you needed both.
Mairi: Sometimes, alarmingly, we’re still occasionally having that conversation, but that was the big conversation back then. She was a real advocate for it and absolutely behind a lot of the work I was doing at that point. But I remember her getting in touch with me out of the blue once and saying, you know, I really understand it now. She’d temporarily lost her hearing due to an infection. So despite the fact that she had got it, theoretically got it, she still wanted to communicate with me when she had that experience. “Oh my god, now I really get it!” And so it’s unfortunate that we need to try and fast-track people into a place of understanding and empathy. But once you get people there, you get a real understanding that they can really have a a really positive impact on how other people experience the world alongside them. That is often the moment where you unlock something in an individual where they go, “I realise now why we’re doing this.” And if you get the why of it, you are more likely to do it.
Mariana: And those people, as you say, often turn into very strong advocates as well.
Mairi: Yes.
Mariana: It’s very helpful. So that’s really, really interesting. And I was wondering if there are any exciting forthcoming projects you can tell us about?
Mairi: Well, I’m excited about Q Backstage, which is the offstage and backstage development project that we’re working on. We’re also going to be back in making work in a theatre space in February next year, Tramway and Glasgow. I can’t really say anything more about what we’re doing, but we are starting to work on a new theatrical experience. That’s where I will leave that.
Mariana: That was mysterious. [both laughing]
Mairi: So yeah, I’m excited about that. I think with Birds of Paradise, we’ve been developing an approach over the last while where we sort of want to tackle a theme or a form. And so we’re looking at creating something that is maybe less traditional, less traditional theatre experience. I’ll just leave it there.
Mariana: Oh well, I’m excited to find out more when when the information is available. And we have a last I have a last question that is a question I like asking everyone because it’s always interesting to hear people’s responses. And the question is, what are your hopes for the future of accessibility in the creative industries?
Mairi: I think I just hope it becomes easier. I don’t mean easier necessarily in the sense that easier as opposed to problematic. I suppose I just hope that we can get to a point of ease. I suppose the idea I said earlier, feeling that knowledge keeps getting eroded, it would be wonderful to get to a place where there was an understanding of things in a way that has properly become a little bit more embedded, you know, the concepts of universal design and all of these things. It’s really, there is more ease around all of that. I think also, unfortunately, a big thing that’s left is dealing with fear and prejudice, basically, and misunderstanding. And, you know, if we think about addressing access in a disability justice space, I think there’s still a lot to be done to get to a place of ease there. And I feel very sad about a lot of things that are happening in the world around that and a lot of ways that concepts around EDI are being politicized.
Mairi: And I’m very sad that there are mechanisms and structures that were built up that have been enabling that more diverse, inclusive workforce and sector that we’ve all been working towards are being stripped away. So, on a really real level, things like access to work being massive, is massively under threat and is directly affecting disabled artists and forcing people out of their jobs and their careers. Jess Thom, who’s the artistic director, Tourette’s Hero, has been very public about this recently. And I think the more we can raise awareness of this, the better. We have to be talking about this because it’s one thing to talk about how we get captioning right or the description right and get into all that detail. But if If ultimately we are working within a society and a culture that’s not supporting disabled people to even be at work or develop a practice or turn up and do the thing they’ve been doing and contributing to hugely. We’ve entered a dangerous zone, I think, where we are pushing disabled people back to the edges. And I think that’s, that’s very dangerous. And that’s where I find it very hard to have hope.
Mariana: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s very good that you, you know, very important that you brought this up, because it’s one, I think that you’re absolutely right, because sometimes in the field, I can’t speak very much about the field of representation and disability, but definitely in the field of disability and accessibility does, as you say, sometimes get so much into the technicalities that we risk forgetting the context in which people can or cannot experience certain things because of the very many other barriers that they’re experiencing.
Mariana: And I think that’s when routing work on accessibility and representation in social justice, is really, really important rather than just seeing it as a kind of a translation exercise, seeing it as something that has a bigger purpose.
Mariana: So thank you so much for sharing that really, really important message that should definitely be in everyone’s minds, I think, right now and always. And thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. It’s been so enlightening to hear about all the wonderful work you’ve done throughout the years and getting to know kind of your thoughts behind how the theatre context works in relation to disability, accessibility, and representation. Thank you so much.
Mairi: Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Mariana: This was an incredibly thought-provoking episode. Thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in. We will be back with a new episode next month.