ABSTRACT
In the context of a media relations workshop that my home university urged faculty to take, I was coached to explain my research on disability theatre in short, media-friendly ways. After several failed attempts which were rightly criticised for being too dense, meandering, or opaque, the experts and interdisciplinary workshop participants selected one story as their favourite ‘hook.’ It concerned the time I went to see a stage adaptation of Dostoevsky’s famed 1898 novel The Idiot which used flashing lights to achieve its dramatic effects. Otherwise a compelling, award-winning, socially thoughtful, and artistically innovative production, the event nonetheless provided a clear example of theatre’s frequently bewildering and antagonistic relationship with disabled people. Although it focused on one of the most famous fictional characters with epilepsy and drew on the work of one of the most celebrated Western literary authors whose life experiences included epilepsy, its design and directorial choices risked inaccessibility for patrons who experience epilepsy and photosensitivity.
