Paul Miller: Developing performance around deaf and disabled experiences of the pandemic (BSL)

As part of my ‘developing your creative practice’ funding from Arts Council England, in January I spent a week at Live Theatre in Newcastle, developing performance work around deaf and disabled experiences of the pandemic.

It was a completely new experience. I usually make theatre work focusing on fantasy stories; we write and follow scripts, only really needing to focus on acting and directing. Instead, this project involved bringing multiple skill sets and experiences together, experimenting and working collaboratively to see what could be created.

It was also an important opportunity to bring together other deaf artists; giving us time to really reflect on our experiences of the pandemic, examine the impact it had on us, and share together in a safe space. 

The project brought together a diverse range of performers. Our team was comprised of dancers Chris Fonseca and Raffie Julien, filmmaker and performer David Ellington, and Brian Duffy, who also works with visual vernacular sign language (a fascinating new medium for me!).

From the first day, when we began sharing our experiences of the pandemic, it was clear everyone had completely unique and different perspectives. For me, lockdown was a painful time which can still feel vulnerable to talk about.

My mum was high-risk so we had to be diligent about shielding, and my son had to go live with his mum in a different bubble so I couldn’t see him. It was incredibly difficult to be apart from him, and I became very paranoid about hygiene due to my mum’s health risks. However, these painful and vulnerable moments led to some deep discussions with the group as we developed the work.

While only a week, I learned a huge amount through developing this project. Including just how different everyone really was, despite our collective shared experience. When I was missing my son, others were frustrated due to being part of big families stuck together indoors and feeling like they had no space.

Others enjoyed the chance to have a break from work and relax, (which blew my mind!), and some experienced isolation and lack of access, but felt they would be able to get through it.

As well as our different experiences, everyone was so individual in their abilities. I gave each person time to share their work and skill sets together, helping us develop professionally and personally. shared the video workshops he’d been teaching in schools, while Brian shared his work teaching deaf children theatre skills like lighting and directing, which is an incredible resource we don’t currently have in the North East.

He also shared more of his visual vernacular sign with us; I had no idea how you develop that or what his process was, so being able to watch him perform showed me things I’d never seen before! 

After discussing our experiences, we all came together to pick key words that kept coming up in discussions, with columns of negative and positive associations such as recharge, isolation or barriers, and used them to build and develop characters and scenes. While I came into the project knowing my own experiences, I had no idea how we’d develop things or what these discussions would lead to, but we evolved and worked collectively as we went. As well as being a strong creative starting point, I think for many of us the work became a chance to really reflect on ourselves and how that time affected us, which we may not have had the chance to do previously. 

It was really impactful to look at all the different events of the last few years, both in terms of lack of access and how these experiences intersected with other events that were going on. We talked a lot about how the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK in 2020 also affected the dancers (three of whom are Black), alongside smaller moments that seemed impossible to believe in retrospect, like the hoarding of toilet roll. There were countless memories and important moments we had forgotten until someone in the group brought it up, helping us tell a story with heart and detail that could also feel relatable to a wide audience.

At times it was also difficult. Watching the story of myself and my son being separated play out on stage could be triggering, and sometimes I had to hold back tears. However, with the encouragement of the group, I performed a poem I’d written about my experiences that was really well received. In fact, the audience feedback was incredible.

We held a sharing for a mixed audience, with many hearing people attending, who shared how they hadn’t realised how much deaf people had been affected or the barriers we faced. Many didn’t even know our issues with the lack of interpreters for England’s lockdown announcements. I think overall the show did what we wanted it to do and conveyed the message we wanted, which is incredible considering we made it in a week! Representatives from the Arts Council also attended and said they hoped we’d continue to develop the work, which is absolutely what we plan to do.

While the core of the show will always be the same, in future we may try and further develop the message and story, as well as looking at other mediums such as more poetry or film for projection in theatres. We definitely didn’t touch on every barrier that we faced at that time, such as being unable to communicate with doctors in full PPE when we couldn’t see their mouths or focusing on the mental health impacts of this time. There’s so much left to expand and explore, and I can’t wait to see where this project takes us next.