“We’re People Who Do Shows”: Back to Back Theatre: Performance, Politics, Visibility ed. by Helena Grehan and Peter Eckersall (review)

An emerging feature of European theatre of the new millennium has been the appearance within “postdramatic” or non-narrative theatre frameworks of performers marked by apparent difference from those who are normally represented in more traditional contexts, a trend that might be described as “outsider theatre.” A few prominent examples include: the Swiss actors with learning and mental disabilities in Disabled Theater (2012) by Jérôme Bel/Theater HORA; the young children performing versions of themselves in work such as Tim Etchells’s That Night Follows Day (2007) and Gob Squad’s Before Your Very Eyes (2011) (both collaborations with the Flemish organization Campo); and the diverse panoply of bodies on display in the work of Romeo Castellucci and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. It is in this context that the Australian company Back to Back, who describe themselves as “an ensemble of eight actors perceived to have intellectual disabilities,” has rightly gained international acclaim with striking and provocative works such as small metal objects (2005), Food Court (2008), and Ganesh Versus the Third Reich (2012). And yet, while the company’s work certainly resonates with this current trend, it is also rooted in the shifting relationships and individual strengths of its longstanding creative ensemble, drawing on trust and expertise developed over a history of nearly 30 years. This new volume from Performance Research Books testifies to this distinctive history, drawing on the voices and personalities of the company and its collaborators as well as offering a range of critical perspectives from scholars. Critical essays, in-depth interviews, a rich selection of photographs, and full playscripts of recent productions are carefully interwoven in what the volume’s coeditors describe as a “dramaturgical” structure that “expresses the artistic sensibilities of the company’s work” (20). As with the company’s theatrical work, text, image, and idea are mutually supportive, and no single voice or perspective is given final authority.

An interview with some of the company’s early artistic directors and collaborators locates the origins of Back to Back in disability outreach services in the 1980s, when a policy emphasis on “deinstitutionalization” favored initiatives that might be expected “to alter the lives of people with disability and ‘normalize’ them” (30). Yet Cas Anderson, who directed the company’s first production in 1987, and subsequent artistic directors Barry Kay and Ian Pidd quite consciously chose to place the work within aesthetic rather than vocational or service frameworks. The company has continued on this trajectory with its current artistic director, Bruce Gladwin, who joined the company in 1999. Indeed, references to “disability” are pointedly absent from this collection’s title, and the company’s descriptions of itself similarly shift the focus away from disability toward the perspective their theatre might offer on wider culture: “Back to Back is uniquely placed to comment on the social, cultural, ethical and value-based structures that define the institution known as ‘the majority’” (220).

And yet, how can one approach this theatre without also approaching the subject of disability? The question of what it is to be perceived as disabled is inextricably bound up in both the ideas this work addresses and the company’s material processes of working together. Indeed, that carefully modulated phrase from the company’s self-description — “perceived to have intellectual disabilities” — gets right to the crux of the issue: again and again, as spectators or collaborators, people who encounter Back to Back’s work find themselves reflecting on issues of perception, mediation, and visibility, and these are recurring themes throughout this collection. Eddie Paterson surveys the company’s work in relation to shifting ideas of text and textuality in contemporary theatre, writing that Ganesh Versus the Third Reich “makes the process of ‘writing’ visible and shows that hierarchical notions of power inherent in language are debatable” (82). Barry Laing offers an honest...