Theatre
Wonderland
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Neil Cooper
Three stars
Why should Alice in Wonderland be forever presented as a white, blonde and very English ingénue? What if she was a little different, and the rabbit hole she fell down not as enticing as her own fantastical uniqueness? These are questions posed by director and performer Josette Bushell-Mingo on the second and final day of Progression 2015, a weekend's international celebration of deaf arts hosted by the pioneering Glasgow-based Solar Bear Theatre Company.
The answers come in the show-and-tell finale that follows a day of workshops with some of deaf theatre's leading practitioners, including Bushell-Mingo and her team from the Swedish Tyst Theatre (Silent Theatre), a company which has been developing deaf theatre for forty-five years as an offshoot of the national touring company, Riksteatern.
The loose-knit programme begins with some interactive games with the audience before Bushell-Mingo hands over to a mix of hearing and non-hearing teenage actors, both from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which has just announced the first ever UK-based British Sign Language course for deaf performers, and from Solar Bear Deaf Youth Theatre.
As Alice becomes a Spartacus-like figure, a kind of communal empowerment is infused throughout the young cast that enables them to conquer their demons and have confidence in who they are. It's short, sharp and as fresh as any devised piece created by a group of strangers over an hour that afternoon. Watching its mix of speech and signing simultaneously translated into Russian for the benefit of the Moscow-based Nedoslov company in attendance, and then signed back to them itself becomes a beguiling demonstration of the power the international language of theatre can transmit beyond anything mere words can muster.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here