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Prologue. Disabling the theater

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Sandra Umathum Benjamin Wihstutz

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 Disabled Theater

Edited by
Sandra Umathum and Benjamin Wihstutz

diaphanes
Printed with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

First Edition
ISBN 978-3-03734-524-5
© diaphanes, Zürich-Berlin 2015
All rights reserved

Cover design: Katrin Rixen

Prepress: 2edit, Zürich
Printed in Germany

www.diaphanes.net
 Table of Contents

Prologue
Disabling the Theater 7

Gerald Siegmund
What Difference Does It Make? or:
From Difference to In-Difference
Disabled Theater in the Context of Jérôme Bel’s Work 13

Benjamin Wihstutz
“… And I Am an Actor”
On Emancipation in Disabled Theater 35

Yvonne Rainer
The Difference between Death and Disability 55

Scott Wallin
Come Together
Discomfort and Longing in Jérôme Bel’s Disabled Theater 61

Interviews with the actors of Theater HORA

On Acting and Spinning 85

Sandra Umathum
Actors, nontheless 99

Kai van Eikels

The Incapacitated Spectator 117

André Lepecki
“Yes, Now, It’s Good Theater” 141

Interview with Jérôme Bel

“It’s All about Communication” 163

Kati Kroß
Christoph Schlingensief’s Freakstars 3000
“… Consistently Abused and Forced to Portray Disability!” 179
Lars Nowak
Disabling/Enabling Photography
On Freak Photography and Diane Arbus’s Portraits 201

Yvonne Schmidt
After Disabled Theater
Authorship, Creative Responsibility, and Autonomy
in Freie Republik HORA 227

List of Figures 241

Contributors 243
 Prologue
Disabling the Theater

Throughout his career, Jérôme Bel has challenged theatrical norms

and conventions in contemporary dance. In 2012, he created Disabled
Theater, a production that involves eleven actors with cognitive
disabilities from Theater HORA in Zurich, one of the foremost inclusive
theater companies in Europe. It performed at numerous festivals,
traveling to South Korea, Brazil, the United States, among other places.
It was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2013, as one of the season’s
ten most remarkable productions, where Julia Häusermann won the
best up-and-coming actor award for her “outstanding performance.”
In spite of international recognition and success, the piece sparked
much controversy. Audiences and critics either praised the stage
presence of the actors and the concept of Disabled Theater, or they
accused Jérôme Bel of holding the members of HORA up to ridicule
and exposing them as amateurs, freaks, and exotics. Representatives
from inclusive theater groups and from Disability Studies voiced the
majority of the criticism. They reproached Bel, who until then had
never worked with disabled actors, for reducing the performers to their
disabilities (instead of working seriously with them) and undermining
the standards of companies such as HORA. What emerged from these
arguments was the collision of completely different conceptions of
theater, art, and aesthetics.
Our involvement with cognitively disabled actors on stage is not
new. Having dealt previously with this issue in the context of the work
of artist and director Christoph Schlingensief (who died in 2010), we
were invited to two events that focused on Disabled Theater in spring
2013: a symposium on theater and disability, hosted in the context of the
Berlin Theatertreffen, and a panel discussion following a performance
of the piece at Rote Fabrik, Zurich. The polarizing discussions at
both events, as well as numerous conversations with actors, dancers,
directors, friends, students, and theater studies colleagues made it clear
to us that we could not remain indifferent about this production. Each
argument or opinion seemed to provoke immediate objections, a No or
Yes, which convinced us of the need to review, or even reformulate,
existing positions regarding the piece. These persistent inconsistencies
and ambiguities, in ourselves as well, gave rise to the idea for this
book.
Bel’s production refuses to indulge in political correctness. It neither
avoids, nor seeks to solve, the difficulties facing theater with and by
disabled people. Some may find this problematic. This book, however,

7
looks at the problem not as a negative, but rather as an opportunity for
discussion. We pursue two objectives, in particular: on the one hand,
we aim to create a forum for heterogeneous positions. In addition to
contributions on Disabled Theater from ten authors, we included inter-
views with some of the actors and Bel himself, as well as statements
from all eleven actors, quoting their responses in Disabled Theater to
the question, “What do you think about this piece?” On the other hand,
this collection extends beyond Bel and HORA’s production, in that it
focuses and sheds new light on fundamental issues concerning the
relationship between aesthetic, social, and political aspects of the per-
forming arts. Under what circumstances, for example, can we speak of
a good performance, of skilled acting, of virtuosic dancing? How can
we escape the ideology of ability? And to what extent does the discus-
sion of aesthetic judgments and the disclosure of their criteria imply a
political dimension?
Thus, Disabled Theater, as both the title of the production and of this
book, is not just a reference to theater and disability, but also a critical
examination of theater as an institution and a dispositif. Our intention,
in other words, is disabling the theater—calling theater’s conventions
and norms into question, preventing theater from working, or, to quote
our interview with Jérôme Bel, taking “power away from theater until
the point where it resists.” This perspective implies that no theatri-
cal rule or logic is taken for granted, or, rather, that these very rules,
norms, and conventions are being deconstructed and hence, made vis-
ible. In this regard, Disabled Theater does, in fact, disable the theater.
Eleven actors with cognitive disabilities appear as themselves before
a mostly non-disabled audience and do nothing particularly sensa-
tional. They merely respond to six different tasks: (1) standing in front
of the audience for one minute, (2) telling their name, age, and profes-
sion, (3) identifying their disability, (4) presenting a dance solo they
have prepared to a song of their own choice, (5) saying what they think
about the piece, and (6) bowing to the audience. Their engagement
with these tasks raise questions that are linked to a broader discussion
of theatrical standards and expectations. For instance, what sort of
relationship exists between the performing arts and the achievement
principle of neoliberal societies? Is there such a thing as an aesthetics
of disability and, if so, to what extent could it be understood as a politi-
cal aesthetics, or an aesthetics of resistance? Under what circumstances
can the stage serve as a place of emancipation for socially marginalized
people? By raising these questions, this book is simultaneously more
and less than an anthology on theater and disability: it aims to trigger
a debate at the intersections of politics and aesthetics, professionalism
and dilettantism, identity and empowerment.

8
 This volume would not have been possible without the generous
support of many people to whom we owe our heartfelt thanks. To
begin with, we feel obliged to all those involved in the production:
the actors of Theater HORA, Urs Beeler, Michael Elber, and Giancarlo
Marinucci, all who responded with great openness to us and to our
project, offering help and advice whenever needed; Marcel Bugiel, the
dramaturge for Disabled Theater, who, in many stimulating conver-
sations, provided valuable insights into the disability theater scene.
Also, we would like to thank Jérôme Bel—both for his trust and for
two extended talks in Berlin and Zurich, out of which the interview
published in this book emerged. Judith Sieber transcribed these talks
with great care and commitment. Further thanks go to all persons
who supported our work, above all Adam Czirak, Erika Fischer-
Lichte, ­Dorothea von Hantelmann, Melissa Ratliff, Katrin Rixen, Xavier
Le Roy, Tino Sehgal, Simone Truong, Marie-Magda Wihstutz, Brandon
Woolf, as well as the directing and dramaturgy students of Ernst Busch
Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Department of Theater Studies at
Freie Universität Berlin, who in passionate and controversial discus-
sions provided important and valuable suggestions. Our gratitude also
goes to Jana-Maria Stahl, who made available to us the interviews
conducted with the HORA actors in the context of her master’s thesis,
and Christoph Nöthlings for his translation of numerous contributions.
Our appreciation of his patience and perseverance cannot be over-
stated. We are indebted to the research center Aesthetic Experience
and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits at Freie Universität Berlin, which
provided a grant to cover printing and translation costs, and without
whose support this book could not have been published. Last but not
least, our thanks go to all the authors included in this volume who
were ready to embark on this project with us.

Sandra Umathum and Benjamin Wihstutz

Berlin, November 2014

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