‘Deaf Accessibility for Spoonies : Lessons from touring Eve and Mary are having Coffee’ by Khairani Barokka
I found it really impressive that Barroka, despite the burden of somewhat having to manage her condition on her own, really considered accessibility to the work beyond the needs of able bodied and ‘hearing’ audience members
I assume this is partly due to her own disability and the need for her to fight for rights and recognition not only in the field of Arts and Theatre, but also in her everyday lived experience as a Woman of Colour who also has a disability
I think she conveys well the way in which these things intersect, and how this may have influenced her wider thinking around access and marginalised communities
It was sad, but not surprising, to hear her reflect on her experiences with the medical profession and the discrimination she has consistently experienced. As a woman of colour suffering with a chronic pain condition I too have experienced having to fight to be believed and been misdiagnosed, despite the condition I have running in my family.
Barroka strikes me as an extremely brave woman, and despite her struggles produced a work that provides a potential learning tool when considering audiences and who can and cannot access the work. Despite not seeing the work (the link I had didn’t work) I’ve found there is enough in the paper to help me to consider how I could apply this resource in my teaching. She highlights how we may think about disability as something not always apparent, how we could potentially support students whose conditions are hidden even by just asking what support they need and how they are managing, to begin looking at what solutions can be found to upcoming/on-going problems and difficulties for students who are from marginalised groups
She raised this question for her students,
“ as a teacher of performance and literature…….I would ask students how, if they lived with chronic pain, they would continue to perform and produce whilst placing an undisputed premium on holistic self care in complex circumstances. Whilst maintaining an artistic practice.” Pg 6
The question is a direct way I could begin to begin introducing awareness around ability/disability to students. Often we don’t think about the advantages we have in comparison to others and I think Barokka’s work provides real insight on how we may begin to think beyond our own experience and into the difficulties experienced by those from marginalised groups, whether we ourselves are marginalised or not. I was impressed how, as a woman of colour with a disability, she really thought about issues of inclusivity around theatre going for deaf and other dis-abled communities. All when she was in huge amounts of pain.
In terms of how I could apply this resource to my teaching it made me think of workshops/lessons that would encourage students to become more deeply known to one another in a way that no single group is advantaged and that everyone’s lived experience is valued
I see this as an ongoing process, not something to get ‘right’ straight away. The role of tutor/teacher is one where you are constantly learning from your students as much as they are learning from you, so their work/research can be constantly gauged to see where attempts to widen understanding and inclusion are working and where the weakness are showing up and continue to amend and improve our approaches