Disabled Theater

Jérôme Bel is a choreographer who has—literally--made history. By placing the structure of the live spectacle under the microscope, he called every given into question with a heady mixture of humor and seriousness, deconstructing the conventional relationship between performer, audience and the material being performed. Ever controversial, he has created this, his latest performance, in collaboration with the HORA theater, a company of professional actors with mental disabilities from Zurich.

In the wake of a series of works which shed light on the relationship between the public and private lives of a number of significant contemporary dancers, Bel now takes a tender, sensitive look at the lives of the individuals on stage. The eleven actors, who are aged 18 to 51, are given free rein to react freely, individually and often humorously to his instructions. Their uniqueness, their weaknesses and their sensitivities serve, ultimately, to spotlight the universality of human nature. The work treats disability honestly: not as something to be hidden behind the curtain of political correctness, but as a part of life with aesthetic and political extensions. Brutally revealing and profoundly political, the work has received a mix of hostility and praise wherever it has been performed.