A fuck you to political correctness: the neurodiverse Back to Back Theater is coming to Brussels

The name Back to Back Theater may not ring a bell outside the arts world, but it is still one of Australia’s best exports. It calls itself “a gang of punks”, but the kind that is liked by the cultural establishment. They already received the ‘Nobel Prize of Theater’ in 2022 with the Ibsen Award. And the first neurodiverse company of down under will soon also receive a Golden Lion for his groundbreaking oeuvre that challenges “our perception of normality”.

Back to Back emerged in 1987 from theater workshops for people with disabilities in the industrial town of Geelong in Victoria. Today the players, who all have an intellectual disability, tour the world for no less than twenty weeks a year. They have also been a welcome guest at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts since 2009. This weekend they open the festival with Multiple bad things, a dystopian sci-fi parable set in an Amazon factory. A five star hit according to The Guardian.

What is wonderful about Back to Back is their big fuck you against politically correct theater. Power, coercion, sexuality, control… These are controversial themes that are always tackled with a lot of self-reflection and black humor. In The shadow whose hunter becomes prey a group of activists with disabilities rebel against the computer that subtitles their words. In Food court, one of their most provocative works and soon to be seen again in Venice, an innocent woman is tortured in a forest. Actress Sarah Mainwaring strips completely naked.

“Actors with disabilities rarely get the opportunity to play an evil character,” says artistic director Bruce Gladwin over the phone. He has been at the helm of Back to Back for more than twenty years. “It’s as if they are not allowed to be human, because evil is in each of us. We wanted to question those stereotypes.”

Britney Spears

The actors of Back to Back have been involved for years. They create all performances together, often based on improvisation, but also based on news facts or their personal world. Three-year creative processes are no exception. There is the special Scott Price, who has difficulty making eye contact due to his autism, but becomes an anti-authoritarian punk clown on stage. Sarah Mainwaring, who suffered brain damage in a car accident as a child, plays on your emotions. And Simon Laherty, who prefers to talk about his obsession with Britney Spears rather than his disability, is a beacon of calm. No wonder the word ‘disability’ is difficult to find on the Back to Back website.

“Some players are very verbal and can write well, others cannot read and have difficulty speaking,” says Gladwin. “How we deal with those challenges creatively becomes part of our aesthetic.” Because Mainwaring has difficulty memorizing lines, Gladwin once sewed her lines onto Laherty’s costume so she could read them during a love scene. Or he works with an earpiece. “There is so much technology that can help actors. Once you embrace that, a lot is possible.”

Yet not everyone believes that the actors do more than follow commands from Gladwin, who himself has no disability. “During the discussion afterwards Food court in Brussels years ago an audience member called me a puppeteer. According to him, the players could not possibly be the authors of the piece. In response we have Ganesh vs The Third Reich made, a piece full of complex ethical questions in which the Hindu god Ganesh travels to Nazi Germany to reclaim the swastika. The actors play partly in Sanskrit. Eat that”, he laughs.

In our country, players with disabilities find it difficult to get paid, otherwise they will lose their benefits. At Back to Back everyone receives a full salary. “It has been that way since the 1980s, at the initiative of actors who were in the union. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best philosophical statement we can make,” says Gladwin.

“Multiple bad things” plays from 10 to 13 May at Théâtre National in Brussels. Kunstenfestivaldesarts runs until June 1.