By James Hadley in London

I recently had some of my attitudes to theatre challenged by a 'fierce' drag queen singing out of tune.

To explain how, I'll backtrack slightly, to a staff meeting at the London office of the Arts Council, focussed on Disability Equality in the Arts. By James Hadley in London

I recently had some of my attitudes to theatre challenged by a 'fierce' drag queen singing out of tune.

To explain how, I'll backtrack slightly, to a staff meeting at the London office of the Arts Council, focussed on Disability Equality in the Arts.Arts Council is currently guiding all its regularly funded arts organisations to have a Disability Equality Scheme (to go alongside their Race Equality Scheme, with a Gender Equality Scheme being encouraged too from next year). It seems like a progressive attitude to me: that it's not about encouraging more mixed ability art activities, or encouraging more venue accessibility for individuals with some kind of disability; it's a matter of equality. Anything less than accessibility can be seen as discrimination. By the end of the presentation by three arts organisations strongly engaged with the rights of individuals living with a disability, I was realising how backwards some of my previous ideas of what acceptable levels of accessibility in theatre are.

One of the companies was the aptly titled Attitude is Everything. This is an organisation that has developed in response to disabled individuals' complaints about lack of accessibility to a lot of music, theatre and festival events. Under the UK's Disability Discrimination Act, major arts providers are obliged to make their events accessible, but many aren't aware of their obligations or how to fulfil them. So members of 'Attitude is Everything' work with organisations to develop a charter of best practice. For example, many outdoors music festivals were found to be largely inaccessible to an individual using a wheelchair, and this has been a particular area of activity for the organisation, which will often provide stewards to such events specifically to help out with accessibility issues. They also send out 'mystery shopper' type representatives to test out accessibility at events.

Before this talk, I'd never given any consideration to how a music gig might be made accessible to a hearing-impaired individual. It's not just a matter of a sign language interpreter being brought in for the event - they need to be given song lyrics in advance, and will be expected to sign comments about the soundscape of the venue's atmosphere and descriptions of the quality of the music - almost an artform in itself.

There was a particularly inspiring speech from the Artistic Director of Graeae Theatre Company, Jenny Sealey. Graeae is the UK's leading disabled-led theatre company, established in 1980, and has a fantastic reputation for producing innovative theatre which just happens to at least partly be performed by individuals with a physical or sensory disability. As an example, Jenny showed us a video of Graeae's recent performance in Trafalgar Square, which included line dancing by several individuals using wheelchairs. There was a real sense of fun and humour about it.

Jenny's account of wanting to be a dancer as a child but being told to give up on her dream because of her inability to hear the music really brought home some of the challenges faced by disabled creative individuals due to the limitations of others' ideas. She foregrounded the fact that even today almost all drama schools around the world have little idea how to respond when an actor with a disability turns up to audition for a place in the school. The standard answer is that the school is unsuitable or lacks the special resources. I had to admit to myself that I'd never imagined 'Hamlet' might be performed by someone sitting in a wheelchair, other than in the context of a specifically mixed-ability company.

The presentation ended with a set from stand-up comedian Liz Carr. She has the blackest sense of humour I've ever experienced, but it's a fantastic way of challenging people's preconceptions. Sitting in her wheelchair, she recounted her opening joke from her set at a venue called 'The Gasworks' at this year's Edinburgh Fringe: she looked at her mixed-ability audience and made some comment about it being the first time since World War Two that so many people in wheelchairs had come to such a venue... From anyone else, this would have been in the worst imaginable taste, but in laughing with her you somehow become complicit in her perspective, and start to see some aspects of the world a little differently as a result - which is a powerful use of comedy.

Anyway, back to the out-of-tune drag queen. A few days after the presentation, I went along with a colleague to see a show called Diva Danny by Russell Barr at Soho Theatre (which is a very urbane venue right in the heart of the West End, with two small studio theatres, mostly presenting new writing). This was a new play based on the true life story of the eponymous London drag queen who was profoundly deaf. It was an irreverent musical, set in hell, and narrated by a geisha drag queen on rollerskates who particularly liked using the approbation 'fierce'. It was a love story really - about the very fierce love that Danny's mother had for him - which led her to go down to hell to check that was okay after he'd died. The part of Diva Danny was performed by an actor who was also profoundly deaf, so when he sang it was similar to accounts of the real Diva Danny's singing - completely out of tune, in a traditional sense, because he'd never been able to hear the tune, but totally beautiful when you opened your mind to it.

Like much of Graeae's productions (so I understand), the production placed a sign language interpreter in the very heart of the play, as a wonderfully devilish side kick to the geisha narrator. She signed with all the attitude and 'devil may care' nonchalance of a drag queen, and the signing was fully integrated into the performance - to the extent that it was often hard to take your eyes off her. This was completely different to any previous use of sign language that I'd seen in theatre, I guess because it had clearly been integrated from the very beginning of the play's development. And that represents a real mind shift.

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Feel free to get in touch with any questions (or if you're planning a London visit and want some theatre recommendations) to jamesstuarthadley@gmail.com

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27/10/08