Discrimination and Segregation: Activism Through Theatre

If a situation or a set of discriminatory life experiences don’t touch a person individually, they have no clue how consistently painful, degrading, dangerous and exhausting that can be on a daily basis. We’re not taught about it in school, in fact we cover it up, and it is certainly not in the interests of those who control the media, who also coincidentally have a stake in the biggest global brands in the world, to share that information.

Discrimination and segregation (physically, literally or in the psyche of a nation) are deliberate acts of division and oppression to protect the interests of a powerful minority. It is not widely highlighted that some citizens have completely unequal and unjust experiences in the few short years we have called ‘a life’ here on this planet other than in sweeping homogenized generalisations, rendering empathy, solidarity and resistance to an apathetic minimum.

The people not affected by brutal injustices, in the name of their society and on their watch, have the luxury of channelling their energies into the living of their lives, and benefitting from the muting and diluting of the brutalities, unquestioningly accepting an assumed inevitability around some people just being ‘second class citizens’, and, if there is a need for human rights movements for groups of ‘others’, they are diminished by being called protestors, pressure groups, rioters and domestic extremists. Activist voices are silenced by the dominant culture with criticism of being ‘political correctness gone mad’, ‘snowflakes’, ‘lefty luvvies’, ‘moaners’ and ‘virtue signallers’. And it doesn’t take a special kind of person to be an activist, there is no training course – you just have to start by asking questions and standing with others.

A veneer of life continues to bubble along and every now and then when an injustice rises up, something that can no longer be silenced or hidden – a murder, a series of murders, someone taking their own life under pressures from the state, people issued with DNRs by the state, people starving to death due to austerity – will capture the nation’s attention momentarily, and there will be temporary outrage and then ultimately relief when the immediacy of that is over, it becomes old news and everyone moves on.

This blog was due to come out to coincide with the release of Siege Part Two, a short digital performance commission by ARC Stockton and HOME Manchester. An opportunity I didn’t invite and felt really lucky to have and as a disabled woman I have felt seen and valued. The piece, as with all my work, aims to shine a light on centuries old, and contemporary, systemic abuse and discrimination of disabled people which has led to our low status as citizens, a situation where our lives are often viewed as both useless and not worth living. The commission of Siege was originally set against the backdrop of global coronavirus pandemic, which has revealed that some lives are more expendable than others, enshrined in the strategies, policies and actions of our Government. In the case of coronavirus, the most expendable lives are those of older people, disabled people and Black and Asian people.

The blog also now comes out at a time of global protests of the Black Lives Matter Movement, brought to a head by the murder of George Floyd by a serving police officer whilst arresting him, in the US. Centuries of oppression through enslavement and apartheid are finally receiving global attention. Every single Black Life Matters every single day, and I also draw attention to the lives of Black disabled people to ensure we acknowledge their deaths at the hands of police officers, an unjust system and other murderers, and the lives lived experiencing injustice and discrimination every day. And to also acknowledge and value with gratitude their work, their voices and their activism. We must work hard to ensure the voices and experiences of Black disabled people are elevated in the Disability Rights Movement and the Disability Arts Sector and that we develop anti-racist actions in our movement.

So I continue and develop my work in the Disability Arts Movement as an activist and artist.

In a decade (and beyond – this has been going on for thousands of years) which has seen systematic abuses of the human rights of disabled people in the UK, as reported by disabled peoples’ organisations, the UN and Amnesty International, and the estimated deaths of over 100,000 due to governmental austerity policies, which are set to get much worse, and research statistics from a Ruderman Family Foundation Report in the US estimated that half of all deaths caused by police officers in the US are of disabled people, along with members of the disability rights movement across the world, those of us who can must continue to raise our voices, fully acknowledging those disabled activists on whose shoulders we build, and with responsibility for those in our communities who do not have voices which are heard. The abuses have been reported by Amnesty International and the United Nations.

My activism comes through the theatre I make, through the raising of voices and the telling of stories from those less heard, from other disabled people and other disabled women. Dominant culture is the site of so much oppression through its lies, its stereotypes and its erasure. I have worked my life long to challenge that.

And my work is about ensuring that the sum total of us is not defined by our oppression – we are not pity parties, we are not tragic but brave victims. We’re bloody gorgeous, complicated, living, breathing, three dimensional human beings full of passion and a commitment to asking questions of the society we live in and share with others.

So where does Siege Parts 1 & 2 fit into my work and my efforts to elevate others and raise our collective voices. I am a writer/director because when I started making work in the early 1990s there weren’t many stories out there that were relevant to me, or my community, so I knew I had to create my own. And not only the stories, but stories that could be told in edgy, radical, dark and funny ways. Although I am a writer/director, I am collaborative and try to be democratic in my process. My audience is usually my first thought and bringing the voices of others into the creative process. I can’t pretend to represent a community but I can certainly be informed by as wide of a perspective of experiences and viewpoints as possible. And as an artist who aims to make gob-smackingly good theatre, it is all the richer for collaboration.

I knew my commission for HOME and ARC would need to be in two stages – the first would be discussion and the second the creation of a piece of new work. And the results are just about that – an incredible discussion series of five short films, featuring an afternoon discussion with the amazing artists Bea Webster, Tammy McNamara, Melissa Johns and Julie McNamara. I knew that they represented a really rich set of intersections in many and layered ways, in terms of where they work in the arts, how they position their work and the identities they reflect and represent in their work. The perspectives included are mixed race, Romany and traveller, queer, crip, non-binary, drag, TV industry, RSC, live art, contemporary theatre, writing, performing, directing from women with a broad range of conditions under the umbrella known as disability and disabled by society.

Our voices aren’t part of the canon. Our voices aren’t part of national policy discussions. Our voices are not valued enough. Our voices are not really a part of willing liberal diversity initiatives in mainstream theatres around the country. Some of our community may be given places in these spaces, but when is this actually led by us. Our voices are silenced.

So the work of Siege is a disruption of that – it is giving a platform, through Little Cog, Home and ARC online, for these voices to be heard, for our transgressions of expectation in our work and our agency to be heard.

The discussion films now come under the collective title The Wrong Woman Discussions, which is a reference to a term Julie McNamara uses in her theatre practice and research. Tammy, JulieMc, Melissa, Bea and myself discussed what we think is expected of disabled women and why that is, we discussed our experiences of being ‘looked at’ both in public and in our work. We talked about how we transgress traditional expectations and assumptions, and we talked about how we have agency, and the challenges of that in a dominant arts world centred around a patriarchal canon, a patriarchal capitalist society and an art world full of inaccessible buildings run by inaccessible people with inaccessible mindsets.

The videos are full of powerful testimonies told in solidarity no matter how many different directions we are all coming from. I am grateful to Bea, JulieMc, Melissa and Tammy for agreeing to put themselves out there. It is not without risk to do so. And I am immensely proud of who they are and the intervention we have created together in theatre and performance thinking.

And this all came from seeds around a piece called Siege which I planned to make as a national touring show for 2021. Annabel and Dan at ARC, where I am an Associate Artist, had already said they wanted to support the development of the show and I was excited to make a piece exploring disabled women’s experiences of performativity and performance. Mim was to be a character fully fed up of feeling looked at through various lenses and deciding that hostage would become hostage-taker – metaphorically speaking, or am I?

I spent a couple of weeks working with Tammy on my character script, discussing Mim, her crip cabaret credentials, the differences between live art and theatre, and where the character of Mim met and differed from Tammy’s own amazing live art alter ego and trailblazer, Midgitte Bardot. In the end the timing wasn’t right for Tammy to perform Mim (lockdown 2020…jesus christ…so hard) but I am incredibly thankful to her for her insight and time on the piece.

So at the moment, Siege has become a 12 minute character film exploring and introducing Mim and is performed by the incredibly talented Philippa Cole. We had a day of rehearsals and a day of filming with her wonderful husband Daniel Griffiths on camera, and me on zoom, behind the camera with him. Fortunately Pippa and I have a kind of shorthand as we worked together on my national touring show Another England, and so in the most bizarre set of circumstances (lockdown 2020…jesus christ….so hard) we shot the script. It’s presented as neither a beginning nor an end but just where we are at the moment.

It is clearly informed by the conversations we all had, and also is multi-layered and metaphorical in disabled women’s experiences of culture, or the machine of culture. It is Mim being edgy, radical and funny about disabled women’s experiences of being in the middle of the radar with a shame-free approach to disabled women’s bodies, experiences and stories.

The Wrong Woman Discussions and Siege are available now on Home Manchester’s website and can be accessed here.

This Blog post was originally featured on Little Cog’s website.

Vici Wreford-Sinnott

Vici Wreford-Sinnott is a disabled British playwright, theatre director, film-maker, activist and equality strategist who is passionate about multi-layered theatre which brings a new aesthetic, alternative dramaturgies and engages audiences in new ways, telling previously untold or mis-told stories. She strives to make dynamic contemporary theatre which has striking visual imagery, a strong sound track and is energetic and physical, challenging widely held perceptions to make change happen. She seeks to disrupt the status quo, with artistic interventions and provocations.

Vici is committed to disabled-led work which explores form, engages audiences in new ways and challenges established theatre venues and organisations to look at theatre differently and to change the way they programme new work. Theatre created by disabled professionals is rich, experimental, brings a new aesthetic, is central to understanding who we are as a society and has a valid place in our cultural jigsaw.

Vici is founder Artistic Director of Little Cog, a disabled-led theatre company, based in the North of England.

She is a co-founder of Disconsortia which is an 18 strong collective of disabled artists from North East England.

Vici is Co-Founder of Cultural Shift at ARC Stockton, a strategic artistic platform for disabled artists. As an equality strategist Vici has created a number of successful models of equality practice.

Vici has previously held CEO posts at Arts and Disability Ireland, based in Dublin and ARCADEA, in Newcastle, England, both cultural disability equality development organisations. Vici is Associate Artist at ARC Stockton, Artistic Directing collaborator with Full Circle Theatre Company – an ensemble of learning disabled theatre makers and was awarded a scholarship for a practice-based PhD in Disability Theatre at Teesside University. Supported by British Council, Vici has recently taken up a series of international opportunities.

Little Cog at www.littlecog.co.uk

Also on TheatreArtLife:

Managing an Arts Organisation in the Midst of a Lockdown

Embracing Disruption to Your Daily Routine

Join TheatreArtLife to access unlimited articles, our global career center, discussion forums, and professional development resource guide. Your investment will help us continue to ignite connections across the globe in live entertainment and build this community for industry professionals. Learn more about our subscription plans.

Love to write or have something to say? Become a contributor with TheatreArtLife. Join our community of industry leaders working in artistic, creative, and technical roles across the globe. Visit our CONTRIBUTE page to learn more or submit an article.