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Frantic Assembly is an innovative British theatre group that has spent ten years at the cutting edge. Their latest show, On Blindness (2004), is about two couples which discover that there's more to perception than just the evidence of our eyes. Edward and Shona both work for a company that produces audio versions of films for the visually impaired. When the shy Edward is invited on a hot date by the sexy Maria, a blind woman, he struggles to reconcile his desire with his sense of her vulnerability. By contrast, the sassy Shona has to confront her own upfront attitudes when Gaetano, a painter, unveils her nude portrait in front of her new boyfriend, Dan. If love can help you see the truth, the play suggests, desire can blind you to the facts. And, the play also points out, the problem with disability is often less the impairment itself than the attitudes of the able-bodied to it.
In many ways On Blindness is a typical Frantic Assembly show. The set is simple, the text is sexually explicit and contemporary in sensibility, and the action is enhanced by gentle dance movements and evocative ambient music. The stories of the two couples take place simultaneously on stage. The cast included Karina Jones, who is blind, David Sands, who is deaf, and Matt Fraser, who has very short arms. Sands and other cast members are always on stage, taking turns signing the dialogue, sometimes creating a delightful complicity between the character and signer. The result is an extra layer of language. Although some reviewers had doubts about the text by Glyn Cannon, most were enthusiastic about the way the mixture of signing, projected captions, and voice-overs made audiences watch and listen differently. Simple words and actions took on added meaning as we were forced to imagine what it's like to be deprived of one or another of our senses. The tension between what we see and what we think was explored not only through the story but also through the physical and spatial relationships on stage.
The play was a collaboration between Frantic Assembly, Paines Plough (new writing specialists), and Graeae (disability specialists), and had four directors: Vicky Featherstone (Paines Plough), Jenny Sealey (Graeae), Scott Graham, and Steven...