Cripping hybrid futures

ABSTRACT

In this collaboratively written article, we argue that disabled performers have long since questioned notions about physicality, subjectivity, temporality and spectatorship on stage that are currently being revisited in the debate on ‘hybrid’ theatre practices during the pandemic. Disability performances, as well as hybrid theatre formats, which are now booming due to the lockdown experience, provoke discussions and discursive negotiations about what theatre is, should be and for whom, and explore boundaries of the art form. Based on these arguments, we will examine the concept of hybridity, in order to critically explore the debate on hybrid theatre in relation to disability performance practices, using the examples of the internationally recognised performing artists Neil Marcus and Sins Invalid, and challenge notions of sustainability within that discourse. We end by asking what demands a hybrid future would need to meet to accommodate the diverse realities of non-normative bodyminds.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability studies
• disability theatre
• theatre during COVID-19
• hybridity
• Anthropocene

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung.

Notes on contributors

Nina Mühlemann

Nina Mühlemann, Dr. Phil., is a queer disabled artist and theatre- and disability studies scholar. Nina Mühlemann has taught at King's College London, the University of Basel and the Zurich University of the Arts and (co)curated several symposia in the field of Art & Disability. Since 2022, she works as a postdoctoral researcher on ‘Aesthetics of the Im/Mobile’ at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB), researching dance and theatre practices of disabled artists that challenge normative modes of mobility.

Celestina Widmer

Celestina Widmer, M.A., studied contemporary history and german literature at the University of Fribourg where she also worked as an assistant. Since February 2022, she has been a research assistant in the SNSF-project ‘Aesthetics of the Im/Mobile’ at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB), where she examines the search by cultural institutions for new ways to circulate theatre and dance productions against the backdrop of the pandemic.

Yvonne Schmidt

Yvonne Schmidt, Dr. Phil., is a senior researcher and head of the research field arts mediation at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) as well as a lecturer and the deputy head of the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film at the Zurich University of the Arts. Currently, she is the principal investigator of the SNSF-project ‘Aesthetics of the Im/Mobile’ and the ‘EcoArtLab’ at the Institute for Practices and Theories in the Arts (HKB).