Access and Gains

In both Simon's talk and the play A Fierce Kind of Love, the importance of access was emphasized. At the beginning of her talk, Simon asked the audience if she was speaking at an appropriate pace and volume, and throughout her talk, she was cognisant of how far she was standing away from the microphone, and continually trying to minimize any noise she was making by breathing out at the microphone. She incorporates the visual and auditory elements in her presentations, using paintings to illustrate story. And the fact she's using a narrative as her means of presentation is worth noticing because narratives tend to be much more interesting and easier to follow than facts. In A Fierce Kind of Love, there were a screen that recorded what was being said in words. At the same time, there were three people who were signing, which was interesting to me. It never stood out to me before that it might be kind of hard to distinguish who is saying what if there is only one person signing a dialog among multiple speakers. And also, the people who were signing were part of the audience, so their presence seemed more natural and non-intrusive. As for considerations for people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities, there were activities that involve physical activities, such as creating the web of strings by asking the audience to hold it. So even if people might not understand what was going on completely, they can still remember and enjoy moments of the play. And speaking of actors-audience interaction, which is (kind of) similar to what Papalia was saying about visiting museums through two people's relationship, I feel that the show's success was largely predicated upon these relationship building before, during and after the performance. First, before the show, the audience were given a booklet on the actors' bios and also got to talk to the actors. Second, during the show, there was a point when actors asked people in the audience their names, which engaged the audience furthermore. (After all, we are more likely to pay attention to acquaintances than complete strangers. ) Third, after the show, there was a Q and A session and a reception (with delicious food :D ), which enables the audience to learn more about the process of preparing for the show and also enables the actors to listen to feedbacks/compliments from the audience, which was very constructive. It makes the show more effective in spreading the message of disability acitivism because that connection with the actors would make the memory of the show stick more and feel more strongly about the issues raised during the show, as opposed some shows where we walk out of the theater and immediately forget about what happened in there. 

This is on a different note, but I was very intrigued by Papalia's argument that visiting museum in a non-visual way with the guide of a friend can create an experience unavailable in traditional ways of visiting. Usually, when I think of listening to someone's interpretation of art, I would guess that would be limiting because the listener is restricted by the speaker's perspective, which is opinionated and cannot be completely reflecting the actual artwork. But when Papalia raised the point of untrained people not understanding jargons in the text descriptions next to the artwork, I realize that our perspective is limited either way. Even through visual engagement with the artwork, our interpretation is still framed by the description given and we do a lot of times, as Papalia says, think that our interpretation is invalid in the face of authoratitive data. We kind of lose the ability to see the art once there is a "correct" interpretation; we only see the intrepretation. So through actively imagining what the artwork is like and listening to a friend's personal intrepretation (hopefully) in addition to the descritions offered by the museum might indeed be very enriching.