At the State Theatre Centre of WA last weekend, a group of about 150 people of varying ages, cultures and abilities took to the stage of the Heath Ledger Theatre as part of an unpredictable show called The Nature of Why.
Before the show started, the audience was told by co-director Caroline Bowditch to expect the unexpected, and that a little more interaction would be required from us than in your typical theatre or music performance.
Instead of sitting we would be standing for the show's 60-minute duration — instead of merely watching, we were free to explore the stage — and might be invited to interact with the performers.
On stage, we stood among instruments and performers: 20 musicians (including a percussionist, clarinetist, violist and a French-horn player), two singers and four dancers.
If you couldn't always tell who was a performer and who was an audience member, that was part of the show's delight.
By the end of the performance, many audience members were dancing — some were singing.
The Nature of Why, part of Perth Festival, was a collaboration between Bowditch, a Melbourne-based performer/choreographer (and as of 2018, executive director of Arts Access Victoria), and the British Paraorchestra, the world's only large-scale ensemble for professional musicians with disability.
In a Q&A session after the show, Paraorchestra viola player Takashi Kikuchi, blind from birth, described the journey from anxiety to trust, as he navigated the stage with the assistance of fellow performers.
An audience member using a wheelchair said that her favourite part was when performers and audience members formed a line, one behind the other, moving their arms up and down in a synchronised wave motion — something Bowditch calls the "infinity mirror".
'A massive wave of inclusion and acceptance'
The Nature of Why is part of Perth Festival's commitment, under artistic director Wendy Martin, to increase accessibility, inclusion, and the expression of disability arts.
In Australia, as in the UK and North America, roughly 20 per cent of the population identify as living with a disability.
And yet in Australia, artists with disability are not only disproportionately underrepresented in creative fields, but they also earn 42 per cent less than artists without disability.
When Martin was appointed in 2015, one of the first meetings she set up was with Perth organisation DADAA (Disability in the Arts, Disadvantage in the Arts WA), to see how they might work together.
The result is a four year initiative that has brought leading Australian and international disability arts practitioners, companies and works to Perth — including, in previous years, Scottish dance artist Claire Cunningham, British director Jenny Sealey (artistic director of Graeae) and Geelong's Back to Back Theatre.
The writer travelled to Perth with the assistance of Perth Festival.