Reasons to be cheerful

Sways of Graeae: Alex Bulmer’s The Garden. Photograph: Alison Baskerville

It’s been a bumper year for the disabled-led theatre company Graeae. This month sees two of their recent productions, The Garden and Reasons to be Cheerful, performed at the Southbank Centre as part of Unlimited, a major disability arts festival coinciding with the Paralympics.

London 2012 has been the spur for the surge in artistic output. In June, the Hackney-based outfit showcased Prometheus Awakes as part of the Cultural Olympiad, a re-interpretation of the Greek myth featuring a marauding eight metre-high puppet. Last month the company’s artistic director, Jenny Sealey, co-directed the Paralympics opening ceremony.

“We shy away from some of those descriptions of disabled people being ‘inspiring’” says Judith Kilvington, Graeae’s Executive Director.

“There are some absolutely brilliant disabled artists out there, and what we try to do is give a diversity of platforms for them to appear on stage with their non-disabled peers and be celebrated as great artists.”

Theatre by companies with a disability aesthetic at their core has suffered in the past through a lack of visibility within the world of mainstream arts. In recent years Graeae have challenged this with ever larger and more ambitious projects.

In the outdoor production The Garden, Deaf and disabled artists appear atop four metre high poles that bend in the air. The performers, playing a troupe of nomadic story-keepers, sway back and forth as they share stories of grace, growing up and imagination amid originally composed live music.

“You do have to adapt some of the pole technology and ensure there’s clear communication for Deaf performers,” admits Kilvington. “But a lot of the visually impaired performers have said how fantastic it is to be making this spectacle in the air and to have the freedom to be creative without worrying about bumping into things.”

One of Graeae’s most popular productions of recent years is Reasons to be Cheerful, a musical written around the songs of the late Ian Dury which premièred in 2010 before being toured nationwide earlier this year.

“After being asked to present The Garden, the programmer of Unlimited, who had heard about our show Reasons to be Cheerful, asked we would be interested in presenting it in a one-off performance as the finale of their programme,” Kilvington explains.

The coming-of-age tale is set in 1979 features a live band playing all of Ian Dury’s classic songs. Vinnie is a wannabe anarchist and school drop-out desperate for tickets to see Dury play with the Blockheads.

“From never having performed at the Southbank before, Graeae are staging two very different productions there,” enthuses Kilvington. “On the Sunday you can see The Garden at 1pm then pop inside to see Reasons to be Cheerful before coming outside and seeing The Garden again at 6pm,” she points out.

“That’s an unprecedented opportunity for Graeae, and what people will notice is the diversity of performance on show. We’re continually trying to go into areas where people would not expect disabled artists to go, such as mass spectacle or aerial work. I think it’s the scale of the ambition that is really exciting and the platform that this festival has given us with that international global audience watching you.”

Last chance to see The Garden at the Royal Festival Hall’s Riverside Terrace today.