Some links to material on this theatre play which was written and co-directed by Chilean actor Alberto Vega, who lost all his ability to move in an accident at a relatively young age. However, he utilizes a special machine which tracks his eyes' movements and helps him write and communicate.
https://vimeo.com/106866970 (Visuals for the play, which portray Vega as an actor before the accident he had)
http://www.cedeti.cl/galerias/los-gigantes-de-la-montana-presentan-lear/#! (Photos)
http://temporadasanterioresteatrouc.uc.cl/Los-gigantes-de-la-montana-presentan-Lear.html (Video trailer of the play, to be found at the bottom of the page)
I wanted to share this because it was at working with Alberto that I realized how much physically-able people tend to reduce people with disabilities to such a condition, as if it dominated their lives. Yet, even though it does determine the form of the interactions with others (humans and non-humans), after spending an evening correcting the visuals for the play with Alberto (and his assistant, who would pass his instructions and responses to my questions), I felt that I was working with just another director, and that, more than being disabled (from the deficit point of view), he was an equally abled director (in comparison to others, as directors) that could also bring a unique point of view to the table, which physically-abled directors could not.
The play was exhibited in two different kinds of sessions: in the first, at the request of Vega, special access was provided for people with physical disabilities by not only adding special accommodations for wheelchairs, but also a video screen with transcripts of the play for deaf people, sign language translation of the dialogues, audio descriptions of the actions and elements of the play for the blind, among others. These sessions, apparently, were mostly full. The other kind of session was a regular show of the play (where special access was limited to ramps for wheelchairs).
Vega is also writing a movie script about how his life after the accident that took his mobility away, in which he emphasizes how he needs to resolve or close some of the personal issues he had before the accident (mostly about his personal and family relationships), while society has encaged him within the notion of "disabled", where everything ends up being related to his physical disability, as if he did not have the same issues than everybody else.
With these two pieces (the play and the film), Vega also addresses the notions of moving/static as constructed by the society of the physically-abled. These notions carry within an imposition from the part of the physically-abled, where movement and its opposite are defined according to how movement is understood by humans who can walk and move without major impediments. Yet, such definition denies people such as Vega the possibility of moving by themselves (instead of only being moved by somebody or something else), thus denying their possibility to unfold as themselves in accordance to their particular way of moving. In the case of Vega, although his body cannot transport itself from one place to the other, his movement (which he as a human is entitled to) is expressed through his ability to move both his own and his fictional stories (many times intertwined) forward.
