This article helped me understand something I didn’t know had a definition: “Invisible Disability”. Too often we assume to know people, we assume that what we see is actually true, we take for granted that our evaluation of people is accurate. Too often we are presumptuous and disrespectful. Too often we don’t look with what Mindfulness would define as “beginner’s eyes”, we rely on our experience, culture, notions thinking we know, but actually we don’t and we don’t even make the effort to find out.

I found very interesting how the artist Barokka uses paint on her body, during her piece, to make her pain visible, to help the audience understand. I also very much appreciated her commitment to making her shows accessible at the cost of not performing the show at all. This is absolutely what should happen everywhere and possibly the only way to ensure that sooner or later fully accessible events will be the norm. It is very interesting how she explains her drive toward making events accessible: “Ironically, in order to produce, write, and perform a show about the vagaries of pain, the invisibility of pain, disabled identity and realities, the persistence of pain – and of multi-layered pain, exacerbated by social conditions, what Yasmin Gunaratnam calls ‘total pain’ – I’d paid such attention to how accessible the show would be for other disabled people who might want to attend, and because there had been no option of dedicated care given to me, I’d given up on my body being allowed to be free of pain. ” […] Accessibility should extend to all – those behind the scenes, performers, as well as audience members – with multiple D/deaf and disabled identities, and more than one impairment”.

In explaining the challenges she experienced when putting together her piece, Barokka also highlights the importance of taking into consideration intersectionality: “I was the only Indonesian artist at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that year, let alone the only Indonesian, disabled woman artist.” […] I was representing a country, a gender, and our minority community of disabled people – disabled people being, however, the largest minority in the world.” She explains further how many blows to her dignity this caused her along the way, e.g. when she was gifted a scarf as an act of charity by the Indian government after being defined by her disability: “[my colleagues are] seen not as artists, scholars, nor even people capable of describing ourselves, but objects for charitable gifts.”

In my own practice, I would blatantly steel Barokka’s suggested exercise, “an intersectional, disability-aware exercise for production classes. I would ask students how, if they lived with chronic pain, they could continue to perform and produce.” I would then encourage disabled students to tell their stories, making a piece about them, so that people without disabilities could try to fully understand them, e.g. a sound piece that represent their pain, or a physical piece that visualises it or both.

As a Production Manager of our performance spaces I would make every effort to make every piece accessible. First of all I would aim at providing audio descriptions, touch tours, accessible seats, accommodating audience members that may need a different chair or extra cushions, making backstage areas more accessible, make scripts and interpretations of shows available online ahead of the shows starting. I would also make every effort to establish a good working relationship with people with disabilities or organisation that support people with disabilities to monitor our accessibility choices and give us constructive criticism.