ABOUT PAUL DAVID POWER
Congratulations to Paul David Power! He is working on a new play about addiction, disability, and pandemic. Crippled, his widely acclaimed play, in which he starred along with Pat Dempsey, has just been published with Breakwater Books and is nominated for the Governor General’s Award!
He’s now looking at booking dates for 2022 and musing on what the future holds. |
IN CONVERSATION WITH PAUL DAVID POWER
What is Cripping the Arts?
“From the disability perspective: persons with any kind of disability, or illness, any kind of illness, need to fit into the square peg of how rehearsals, warmups, and workshops are done. ‘Do what you feel is comfortable’ isn’t good enough, because you end up feeling like a separate entity. Questions need to be asked such as, ‘What are your accessibility needs? What can you handle at a time, when do you need down time?’ We need to expand how we approach accommodating people’s physical and mental needs, rather than just the show needs. The pandemic is giving us all an opportunity to take a breath, to examine what are we doing in the arts”
The National Arts Centre is providing funding for Paul while he is being mentored and doing research in the National Disability arts scene, so that he can apply his findings to his best practices in his work here in Newfoundland and Labrador. In a single conversation with him my own perspective on accessibility completely shifted. Technology is advancing rapidly with an array of different technology now available for accessibility. Technology is putting a lot of things on our dashboard: from ASL interpretation, to instantaneous close captioned programs, to audio descriptions. Paul also raises the question of: How can we integrate these elements into live performance? How will all of these things influence how we approach writing, how we describe things in our scripts?
Even as the pandemic helped make collaboration and sharing more accessible, Power Productions carries all the usual worries, now exacerbated by Covid: How to make a season? How to survive as a company? Will people invest in watching theatre on the screen when it’s local? Can we shift in how we value or undervalue performance? We are all missing that live audience experience. Perhaps we can also shift all the different ways there are to view a performance, to work toward a time when a person in a wheelchair can have just as much choice as anyone else as to where they sit. Expand your mind even before you put that pen to paper, think about how that show is going to be presented for the audience experience.
“I’d like to see more focus on the word ‘inclusion’. The word ‘accessibility’ can be a scapegoat, used to tick off boxes. There are many disabilities and each one has an entirely unique culture, more than just sign language, it’s about words used, expressions used, shared experiences.”
A dream would be...
“To have an Arts support group for theatre, a working collectively shared space. That would be awesome, especially if you’re writing and creating alone much of the time, a space somewhere, a co-op space tailored to theatre where we can go work and come together.”
For more, visit
www.powerproductions.ca
Find his book, Crippled, at www.breakwaterbooks.ca
#Crippingthearts #inclusion #blueskyvision
“From the disability perspective: persons with any kind of disability, or illness, any kind of illness, need to fit into the square peg of how rehearsals, warmups, and workshops are done. ‘Do what you feel is comfortable’ isn’t good enough, because you end up feeling like a separate entity. Questions need to be asked such as, ‘What are your accessibility needs? What can you handle at a time, when do you need down time?’ We need to expand how we approach accommodating people’s physical and mental needs, rather than just the show needs. The pandemic is giving us all an opportunity to take a breath, to examine what are we doing in the arts”
The National Arts Centre is providing funding for Paul while he is being mentored and doing research in the National Disability arts scene, so that he can apply his findings to his best practices in his work here in Newfoundland and Labrador. In a single conversation with him my own perspective on accessibility completely shifted. Technology is advancing rapidly with an array of different technology now available for accessibility. Technology is putting a lot of things on our dashboard: from ASL interpretation, to instantaneous close captioned programs, to audio descriptions. Paul also raises the question of: How can we integrate these elements into live performance? How will all of these things influence how we approach writing, how we describe things in our scripts?
Even as the pandemic helped make collaboration and sharing more accessible, Power Productions carries all the usual worries, now exacerbated by Covid: How to make a season? How to survive as a company? Will people invest in watching theatre on the screen when it’s local? Can we shift in how we value or undervalue performance? We are all missing that live audience experience. Perhaps we can also shift all the different ways there are to view a performance, to work toward a time when a person in a wheelchair can have just as much choice as anyone else as to where they sit. Expand your mind even before you put that pen to paper, think about how that show is going to be presented for the audience experience.
“I’d like to see more focus on the word ‘inclusion’. The word ‘accessibility’ can be a scapegoat, used to tick off boxes. There are many disabilities and each one has an entirely unique culture, more than just sign language, it’s about words used, expressions used, shared experiences.”
A dream would be...
“To have an Arts support group for theatre, a working collectively shared space. That would be awesome, especially if you’re writing and creating alone much of the time, a space somewhere, a co-op space tailored to theatre where we can go work and come together.”
For more, visit
www.powerproductions.ca
Find his book, Crippled, at www.breakwaterbooks.ca
#Crippingthearts #inclusion #blueskyvision
The Thriving Together initiative has been made possible through support from the Canada Council for the Arts.