Detailed Information on Publication Record

This is a textual record of the author’s recent research among European theatre companies (Blue Apple Theatre, Theater Thikwa, Théâtre de l'Oiseau-Mouche, RambaZamba Theater) working with actors with mental impairments. Such companies see the creative and scenic potential in their actors. They use this in their collaborative work and its final presentation in the form of theatre performances. Providing quality time for people with ntellectual disabilities can be considered as a by-product of their collective work. In the text, the author compares the creative ambitions and strategies of these foreign companies. The main aim is to find out the answer to the question: In what ways do the leadership and communication strategies, what interviewees said to the author, and the concrete creative outputs of the ensembles which author have chosen to study correspond to each other? For the respondents from both Theater Thikwa and Théâtre de l'Oiseau-Mouche, the fact that artists without disabilities and actors with intellectual disabilities have the opportunity to create together means a springboard for exploring new themes, unusual subjects, approaches to the material and unexpected interpretations. In RambaZamba, they stage dramatic texts using theatrical devices that their audiences may be familiar with from other German-language theatres today. They do not want to create specifically differently just because their acting troupe is composed of actors with mental impairments. At the Blue Apple Theatre, the results of their work seem to have a much greater impact on the creators themselves and their actors (and by extension, all the participants in the drama workshops that the Blue Apple holds regularly in Hampshire) than on the theatre audiences who attend their productions.