Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Performer and playwright Gardiner Comfort has Tourette syndrome, a tic disorder that causes a range of involuntary, repetitive movements and vocalizations. When developing his autobiographical solo show about living with the condition, he knew he wanted to do more than just talk about it. So Comfort and his co-creator/director Kel Haney enlisted scenic and video designers Caite Hevner and Lianne Arnold to give audiences a visceral sense of how he experiences the world.
3 comments:
I was struck by the end of the article about how for the first time Comfort felt normal surrounded by kids who also suffered from Tourette syndrome, “who also involuntarily coughed, shrieked, jerked, and spasmed”. This is probably not the most appropriate thing to say but it’s just such an irony that a person who suffers from a neurological disorder has the last name “Comfort” as I’m sure most of the time his life is filled with discomfort, feeling not fit in anywhere and spending most of his childhood and adulthood dealing with this condition. It is unbelievably courageous of him to create a show based on his own experience and raising awareness among audiences about this disease. The story will be very private and emotional I guess. Based on the article, the design elements of this production seem to be very exciting as well, for the team have worked hard to visualize the experience for example “here are moments when lightning cracks and swallows the room, or saturated colors bleed across the wall.” This is such an important piece of work and I would really love to watch it if I get a chance.
I think it is really interesting how Comfort wants to use media and scenic elements not to represent an extension of his character rather than represent his actual environment or replace traditional scenic elements. There is a dog in this airport and it's wearing a pink tutu and its cute and back to media and projection design. I think it would be interesting if the designers explored projection surfaces that were not flat, and how those could represent Gardiner Comfort's experience in the world. I think the black box setting will be really effective in closing the distance between the audience and the performer; having that separation you get in larger performance spaces would probably do more to alienate the audience from Comfort than really bring them into his expression of self. I would be interested to see how this play could transform to have the same intimacy in larger performance spaces.
It’s important that theater had the ability to portray characters of all different backgrounds going through many different struggles in life. If we don’t vary the characters we portrayed we would just have theater with a bunch of identical boring stock characters all over the place. Shows like the one Comfort wrote are so important in the theater world. It allows people with disabilities, or anything else that might set them apart from the social expected “normal” to see themselves and possible something closer to their experience on stage being represented to the masses. People crave human connection in everything we do. We want to be represented and want to feel like we can empathize with a character’s experience. Recently I have been reading more and more about people with autism being represented in theater and now someone dealing with Turrets being represented and this is the steps forward to a more inclusive and equitable theater world that we need to be making.
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