#nabilshaban

The medium of theatre, with a few exceptions, has rarely grown beyond an impotent infancy with its facile and fallacious belief that physical beauty equals the good. There is a chance that more truly representative visions of the world will more effectively lead the world to a greater maturity, tolreance and safe keeping.

A distinction has to be made between theatre FOR the disabled - suggesting that the disabled people [...are] passive recipients of able bodied thespian activity - and theatre OF the disabled suggesting that disabled people have much greater control over their own activity.

Until the mid 70ies disabled people's active partecipation was neither promoted or allowed. With the growth of radical ALTERNATIVE theatre (feminist, black or gay) came a growing of self-awareness and confidence among disabled people.

In Britain the public expression of disabled people theatrical aspiration can be dated  back to the mid 1970s (Theatre of the Deaf and Interim Theatre)

Our disability is more usually the unhealthy preoccupation of the non disabled person which invariably reinforces our interior status in the world.

For theatre to remain vibrant and blossom beyond incestuous sterility, adventurous casting is vital.

All quotes by (Shaban in Chambers. 2002.)

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