The Acts

An abstract painting by Rachel Gadsden, showing five figures made of white lines flowing around a stage. From left to right: figure one is an electric wheelchair user underneath a spotlight, mid-movement; figure two stands at the back of the stage with their hands up as if they are signing; figure three is bent double, as if in a bow; figure four, a manual wheelchair user, is mid-movement; and figure five is in a running pose as if moving swiftly offstage. The figures are surrounded by swirling lines of pink, orange, green, blue and yellow, representing their movement & stage lighting. The overall feeling is one of vibrant movement.

Friday 8 – Saturday 9 November, 7.30pm

Pit Theatre, The Barbican

BSL Interpreted, Audio Description, Captioned

About

The Acts is a meta-theatrical piece which brings together individual works from four of the UK’s most exciting disabled theatre makers & companies.

Join us inside the walls of a bustling theatre, where four acts are hard at work on their latest productions: a solo show about love, joy, and cancer; a comedy about the ways neurodivergent people are expected to sell their stories for the stage; a live art and sound performance that explores posthuman ideology; and a multisensory meditation on isolation and moon landings.

In a rapidly changing artisic landscape the Acts explores the work disabled people are allowed to make and the conditions we’re expected to make it. Perhaps we need an artistic revolution.

The Acts comes to The Pit Theatre at the Barbican for 2 nights, Friday 8th & Saturday 9th November.

The Acts has been made possible with the support of Arts Council England and The Barbican Centre.

Act 1
Stephen Bailey and ASYLUM Arts present the darkly comedic Autistic as Fuck, exploring the complexities and contradictions of neurodivergence, masking, and the ways we’re told we need to tell our stories for them to be seen by non-disabled audiences.

Act 2
Peyvand Sadeghian & Matthew Robinson use immersive projections & material from the NASA archives of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, to navigate awe, despair, wellness, and isolation in Over The Moon (working title).

Act 3
Rachel Gadsden & Freddie Meyers bring PostHuman, a dynamic “live” art and sound performance that navigates the audience through a journey of PostHuman ideology. Through considerations of institutional discriminations and the need to reiterate ethics and justice, PostHuman addresses how chronic illness and disability not only presents challenges, but also empowers and authorises agency of the body.

Act 4
A.C. Smith brings To Rose On Her 18th Birthday, a love letter written by a mother to her daughter as she reaches for joy after twice developing cancer, aware her daughter may have inherited the same genetic risk.

Writers & Performers

A white man with blonde hair. Smiling. Wearning a grey T-Shirt in front of a brick wall

Stephen Bailey / Asylum Arts

A close-up photograph of Peyvand and Matthew at a Wes Anderson film exhibition. Peyvand on the left is a woman has a blue-tinted bob haircut, septum ring, and is wearing a vintage orange-striped shirt. On the right is Matt, a man with short light coloured hair wearing a tan-coloured shirt.

Peyvand Sadeghian & Matthew Robinson

Rachel Gadsden & Freddie Meyers

PostHuman

A.C. Smith

To Rose on Her 18th Birthday

Sahera Khan

‘Director’, The Acts

Creative Team

Jamie Hale

Director

Caitlin Richards

Producer

Jack Wakely

Development Producer

Phoebe Kemp

Movement Director

Rudzani Moleya

Assistant Director

Stella Kailides

Stage Manager

Damien Stanton

Set, Props & Costume Designer

Al Simpson

Lighting Designer

Sound Designer

Rachel Sampley

Creative Caption Designer

FlawBored

Audio Description Consultant

David Ellington

BSL Consultant

Creative Access Support Worker