Chapter 10 Between Therapy and Art: Borderline Space in Polish Theatre of People with Intellectual (Dis)Ability
In: Disability and Dissensus: Strategies of Disability Representation and Inclusion in Contemporary CultureSearch for other papers by Dorota Krzemińska in
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Abstract
The chapter focuses on the artistic work of several Polish theatre companies which consist of adults who were clinically diagnosed with low-functioning intellectual disabilities and which created an informal association IM+. It examines selected fragments of interviews with the disabled actors as well as non-disabled therapists and theatre practitioners who collaborate with these ensembles. Placing their analyses in the context of Homi Bhabha’s third space and Mikhail Bakhtin’s borderline, the authors show how the members of the companies venture beyond the narrow medical context of occupational therapy, which is symptomatic of a slow but persistent change that has been taking place in Polish disability culture over the last few decades. The chapter discusses the work of IM+ as a way to establish a third, dissensual space, a borderline in which disability art and disability itself can be renegotiated, and new meanings, identities, and cultural narratives emerge, thus helping reconfigure the Rancierian inegalitarian distribution of the sensible. In this way, it helps destigmatize intellectual disability and conceptualize it as a productive source of creativity rather than a form of deficit.