To start, close your eyes. Then keep them closed until the end of the play. Let the sound guide you. Walk onto the stage and reach out to touch.
It is the form of theater and dance practiced for several years by Laurie-Anne Langis and Audrey-Anne Bouchard, who worked together, notably on the play Camille. An appointment beyond the visual, presented several times since 2019. Their work is intended to be accessible to all audiences, including the blind and the deaf. Sighted people are invited to blindfold themselves during the exercise. The approach of the two artists was highlighted recently during a day devoted to the practices and aesthetics of capacity diversity, organized by the Canada Research Chair in the Cultural Citizenship of Deaf People and Cultural Equity Practices.
“I asked myself: what is dance, if it is not seen? said choreographer Laurie-Anne Langis in an interview.
Audrey-Anne Bouchard, for her part, suffers from a visual impairment that deprives her of her central vision. The two women met on a dance production at which Mme Bouchard participated as a lighting designer. “She came on stage with the dancers to feel the light,” says Laurie-Anne Langis. She also uses her sight a lot, but her sensory way of approaching the work appealed to me. »
Denise Beaudry, social worker, mother of four children and blind herself, participated in the development of the play by recounting her experience as a spectator. ” When they [les créateurs] set up the play, they brought in blind people, she says. I tripped, I really tripped. Everything was done for a person who cannot see. They created everything from scratch. »
Mme Beaudry stood on the floor where the scene was being played and had to give feedback on what she perceived. If the scene involves a group of people at a restaurant, for example, you have to be able to locate the different characters, and avoid cacophony if they are all talking at the same time.
Tactile workshops
The idea of making the performing arts more accessible to people of so-called “capability diversity” is slowly gaining ground in Quebec. The evening of our interview, Denise Beaudry went to the Théâtre du Rideau Vert, where we inaugurated, with the play The son, a brand new sign language theater description and interpretation system. Before the premiere of the play, she had gone to a tactile workshop, at the theater’s invitation, with a group of blind people. To better follow the play at the time of the presentation, the group was invited to go up on the stage, to touch the costumes and the accessories. “The exercise of the tactile workshop is done quite little,” says Erika Malot, artistic development coordinator for the Green Curtain, who is responsible for the brand new accessibility program.
Almost all the theater plays of the Green Curtain season will thus be adapted for blind and deaf or hearing-impaired audiences, but not the review of the year 2022, which is too closely linked to current events to comply with translation deadlines in sign language. “It’s really a growing phenomenon,” says Ms.me Wrong. Among Anglophones, the Segal Center is truly a precursor. MAY [Montréal, arts interculturels], which is also a broadcaster, also does a lot of things. There are also specific initiatives”, in other theaters.
“Usually, when I go to see dance or theater performances, and there is no audio description, I have the show described to me,” says Denise Beaudry. There are people around me who describe it very well. They are used to. They describe parts of it to me, then at other times they focus on what they see. »
According to Mme Malot, the blind public is more difficult to reach than that of the deaf and hard of hearing.
Initiatives like those of Audrey-Anne Bouchard and Laurie-Anne Langis allow, conversely, sighted or hearing audiences to put themselves in the shoes of those who are deprived of these senses. “I realize that sighted people are less comfortable or more vulnerable,” says Ms.me Langis. They are not used to the unknown that vision loss brings. »