Industry Perspective: Accessible Theatre with Frozen Light

 * This article was written by the team at Frozen Light, which designs sensory theatrical productions for individuals with disabilities. *

What does accessible theatre mean to you? What do you need to access the theatre?

At Frozen Light, we make sensory theatre for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD). Access is at the very heart of our artistic process. Every decision we make is based on the audience's experience at each moment. Individuals with PMLD have more than one disability, the most significant of which is a profound intellectual disability. PMLD individuals access the world on a sensory level and engage with the world in an often non-verbal way. It’s a group of people who will need one-to-one care and support in order to access the world, and they’ll need this care for all of their lives. It’s a group of people who are often wheelchair users, but certainly not everyone. Often, they’re quiet, but sometimes, they’re absolutely not. It’s a diverse population of individuals, all with their own likes, dislikes, and preferences.

We’ve met thousands of individuals with profound and multiple learning disabilities through our work. They could be someone like our sensory studio artist, Lydia, who loves spherical objects, who is rarely seen without something in her hand that has taken her interest that day, who loves music and singing, who looks you deep in the eyes and finds it hilarious when you fall over. Or Rosey, who loves the sound of scratching on material and a clarinet being played closely so she can feel the vibrations, who much prefers feeling things with her feet than her hands. Or Dan, who will chase actors around the stage looking for the prop he wants, or leave the room when it all gets too much, who will play his hand drum and keyboard, and often wants you in a headlock. These are the people we make work for.

So, how do we approach making theatre? We do it in a sensory way. From our years of experience, we know this is a population that experiences the world through their senses. To our audiences, a drawing of a car doesn't represent a car. It’s a piece of paper on which a car is drawn. It feels like paper, it smells like paper, it tastes like paper. The picture of a car isn't a car because cars don't feel/smell/taste like paper. This is our starting point. But how do we take this and turn it into theatre?

Well, firstly, the sensory, our access tool, is never an add-on. It’s built in from the very first idea, the first production meeting, across everyone we work with. Often, it’s a sensory question that sparks our imaginations: what does sound feel like? How can we explore a post-apocalyptic desert planet in a sensory way? What did all those ‘80s neon sci-fi films smell like? These questions come from us as artists, our interests, things we’ve noticed from working with audiences on previous shows and in our Sensory Studio, things that excite us. We then start world-building and creating landscapes that feel innately sensory, like magical sensory interactions can happen in them. We'll then add characters to the landscapes, music, sensory props, and then a story/script. We flip theatre-making on its head. We work closely from day one of our projects with our set designer, lighting designer, and production manager. These members of the creative teams use design tools like Vectorworks Spotlight to start to create those worlds. 

We create large, high-quality sets, often quite complex architecturally. Our team works to design and figure out how to build the sets, make them tourable, and explore how we can make these spaces exist on all the stages we tour to and really bring these worlds to life for our audiences.

Every part of our production has a sensory prop to accompany it, and this is absolutely key to how we work with our audiences. So, for example — we are back in that post-apocalyptic desert planet, there’s been a dust storm, the performers on stage have acted being in a dust storm, there’s dramatic music, storm sound effects, the lighting is warm and the air full of haze but for our audiences this may not be enough for them, so the actors will break from their "acting" role and collect some beautiful bowls of sand; the sand has been mixed with corn flour to make it dusty and cinnamon to add a smell. This will be taken to each individual audience member and offered for exploration. Some audience members might dive straight in, throwing it all over the floor; some might take a while to move their hand into position to get it in the bowl; some may need the sand brought to them, and some might tell you to get lost with your awful bowl of sand. But whatever someone wants, we listen to. We listen with all of our beings, not just with our ears, not to someone's words (this isn’t how our audiences express themselves), but through all our senses, through shared space and tiny gestures, and we begin a conversation. A conversation that isn't reliant on chatter, that isn't about linguistics but is based on shared humanity, on sharing space and a moment in time. The access to our work really lies in these interactions. Because these interactions open up the world of the show for our audiences, these interactions are our invitation to come join us in the magical world we’ve created.   

It's also these up-close sensory interactions around beautifully designed props and our large sets in which the audience sits that make us different from relaxed performances. Relaxed performance has been a movement in the last 10 years to offer "relaxed versions" of main house shows. The shows remain the same, but often, the loud noises are taken out, the house lights are left on, and audiences can make noise, move about, leave the auditorium, and come back. These relaxed performances make theatre accessible for some groups of audiences, but not for ours. Yes, we absolutely create a relaxed environment, but for it to work for our audiences, they need to be on stage with us; it needs to be a small audience so we can engage on a one-to-one sensory level, and it needs to have more, not less — more props, beautiful lighting that transports you, and music. Lots of it.

Accessible work for this audience needs to be intimate and sensory, but we would argue it also needs to be bold, exciting, joyous, and of the highest possible quality. It needs to offer a group of people who may not be able to access Broadway or the West End the same level of awe and wonder that those shows will bring you. Doesn't everybody deserve the right to experience the magic of theatre? We certainly think so!