Claiming a place on stage

Philip Patston wants to raise acceptance and awareness of disabled artists. Picture / The Aucklander

The Giant Leap International Disability Festival does a good line in confrontational press releases.

Festival creative director Philip Patston issued one with the title "Return of the freak shows?"

A joke, perhaps. Well, no. Patston might be an award-winning comedian, but the festival's dozen international and local acts do pose, and seriously so, this question, he says.

"I used that title because of one of the British performers, Mat Fraser, his show basically asks the question, in a post-modern setting, do people come to things like Giant Leap in order to see art or do they come because they can sit there for two hours and stare at a guy with small arms and, if they did the latter, would that be a legitimate thing to do?"

Patston says he is not sure of the answer to his own question.

"I think that probably, to begin with, people do come out of a kind macabre curiosity where they think God, this couldn't be good, let's go have a laugh. But I think 90 per cent of the time people will come away thinking that was amazing, I enjoyed that, maybe I need to rethink some of my ideas about disabled people."

There is certainly no shortage of ideas in Giant Leap. In his one-man show Sealboy: Freak, Fraser, who has foreshortened arms because of Thalidomide, jumps between feats of strength, drum'n'bass, sexuality and Class A drugs.

American David Roche's show The Church Of 80 Percent Sincerity tackles another common stereotype of freakishness - facial disfigurement. At the beginning of his one-man show he encourages the audience to say with one voice "what happened to your face?"

Other acts include top British deaf performer Ramesh Meyappan, Patston, who won a Billy T comedy award, local mixed ability dance company Touch Compass performing new work and visually impaired singer Caitlin Smith.

The idea for Giant Leap came after Patston performed at similar festivals in Adelaide and Vancouver.

"I was inspired by the quality of the work and also by being in a performing situation where people understood disability and weren't scared to laugh because they thought they might offend."

However his festival is not about normalising disability performance and art, he says.

"The great thing about being in AK05 is it's saying we are a distinct genre of art in the same way indigenous art is distinct. But it's also saying there needs to be an acceptance and awareness of disabled artists and performers. It's about promoting disabilities arts which is an expression of disabled people."

Patston says that until now disabled people have been identified by who they are not, rather than who they are.

"What you find with movements as they develop and mature, that's when the artistic stuff happens. You start off fighting for your rights and raising awareness about discrimination and once you move through that part, then you can say okay, well if I'm not this thing society has told me I am, who am I? To be able to express yourself creatively, either artistically or in performance, is the next step of saying this is who I am, this is who I identify with."

The festival is for everyone. But the big difficulty Patston sees is the assumption by some that disabled performers lack professionalism.

"My experience is that it's as good and better because it's something you have never seen before.

"I want non-disabled people to come and experience it because it's about seeing a show that's a hundred times more enlightening than reading a book or going to a disability seminar, which is the stuff I do when I'm not on stage."

But is there such a thing as disability art and performance, or is it simply by people who are disabled?

Patston says both. There are artists and performers who are identified as disabled by society who use their work to discuss that and raise awareness. But there are others who happen to be disabled who don't see their experience of disability as anything to do with their work.

"I accept both. But I think the festival is about disability. It's not a festival where a disabled person comes along and sings a song about nothing. It's about discussing issues."

Those issues include access to the arts, funding and arts development for disabled artists.

"The arts community is really ignorant and quite discriminatory really when it comes to disabled people. Most funders are not really aware of the issues."

Which is why the festival has a deliberately international focus, though he knows there may be snide comments that there weren't enough local people to fill the bill.

"It was a conscious decision to show New Zealand that this stuff is happening around the world and we need to be upping the ante and joining that global community. I think for arts organisations and funders, I want to raise the consciousness to say we have to start talking about disability artists as a genre in the arts."

*What: Giant Leap Disability Festival

*Where and when: Tapac, 100 Motions Rd Western Springs, Feb 28-Mar 6

*On the web: www.giantleap.org.nz