Disability Theatre for the Modern Age: Eve Leigh and Rachel Bagshaw’s Midnight Movie

British Playwright Eve Leigh has written several new and experimental works in the past decade, including The Trick and Stone Face, Silent Planet. Her most recent work, Midnight Movie, just played London’s Royal Court Theater as part of its new playwrights residency program. Frankly, I stumbled upon this show during my visit. A grad school professor I met with mentioned its integration of British Sign Language (BSL) in response to my interest in sign language on-stage as I directed a show in American Sign Language in 2017. So, I decided to check it out. I expected something experimental, perhaps even odd, but I didn’t expect it to so radically challenge my understanding of experimental theatre as a medium for disabled artists.

So, what is it about? A singular plot in the traditional sense is hard to pin down, but it does take place in a bedroom – a sparse one outfitted with a bed, wall lamp, drum set, and a fish tank with rubber ducks floating in it. Along the wall, the entire show is open-captioned with projections of the spoken and signed words. The play is initially simple conceptually: a restless person spending the night in a sort of internet deep-dive through videos, news feeds, and scary stories. For the first twenty minutes or so, I lamented that I was, perhaps, about to sit through another 90-minute piece warning us about how technology has ruined society. I was so pleased to be proven quite wrong. The play introduces the concept of a “digital body” early on, but it isn’t until the end that the concept becomes clear. Truthfully, the two actors on-stage, Nadia Nadarajah, a Deaf woman of color, and Tom Penn, a large man with impressive drumming ability, are not the character at all. They are “avatars” inhabiting a space that the voice they are portraying cannot. The night’s long journey through all corners of the internet? A distraction for the chronic pain of disability, as is eventually revealed through the dialogue. The digital body is limitless when the physical body fails. Nadarajah and Penn represent different ways to tell that story in an art form and industry that was not built for bodies like the narrator’s. Indeed, we never know exactly who the narrator is, how old they are, what exact illness or disability they have, where they’re from. Like their avatar, their digital persona, they could be anyone and everyone. The narrator does tell us, however, that they have severely impaired vision. What would it be like, they wonder through the hands of Nadarajah, if their story was told through a visual language; BSL? What would it be like told by a conventionally strong, masculine body like Penn’s?

The show not only confronts issues of accessibility on-stage but also in the audience. Beside me, a woman wore headphones through which an audio description of the action on-stage was provided. The entire show was signed by Nadarajah as well as spoken by Penn and captioned by projection. Sometimes, the two appear to have a dialogue with one another. Sometimes, they seem to share lines. Wheelchair seating was priority, and the audience environment was relaxed and comfortable. Furthermore, for those who could not physically attend the show, the “digital body” experience sent them different stories and essays via email over the course of several weeks that would craft the story of the show. In other words, even in a relatively old theater like the Royal Court, the show practiced what it preached. In many ways, it wasn’t intended for an audience member like me: an able-bodied, hearing person. Still, I am glad that it wasn’t. There is so much theatre out there meant for people like me, but so little that is not only accessible to disabled folks, but intended for them.

Immediately following the performance, I purchased the script. I was fascinated by this iteration of the classic “unreliable narrator,” or in this case, representation of the narrator. The script does not denote certain lines for one actor or another. It is only pages of text. It suggests, at the start, that the story should be told by “too many people.” In this production of it, two actors for one voice, utilizing the suggestion of visual language. Midnight Movie’s script leaves much up to the director. Bagshaw is herself a pioneer in accessible theatre. She directs the Access to Acting program for young disabled artists across Britain, among other shows and programs in which she has spearheaded accessibility. Her interpretation of Leigh’s genius conceptual writing was equal parts strange and profound. The scenes of loud drumming and electronic noise felt juxtaposed against moments of quiet and reflection were perhaps the best representation of pain and distraction I have ever seen. We have all felt pain and tried to pull our minds from it. Midnight Movie asks us to question what it would be like to need those distractions every minute of our lives.  

While Midnight Movie does not shy away from depicting the ugliest aspects of the digitalized world. It takes on the “Blue Whale Challenge,” a “game” in which one agrees to take on challenges set forth by a mystery person through online chat rooms, often increasingly dangerous ones that led to the injuries and deaths of several young people. It also makes reference to specific events such as the 2013 viral security camera footage of Canadian student Elisa Lam dead in an elevator. Still, the play does not criticize the internet. Nor does it celebrate it, really. It treats it as it is: a tool that, for better or worse, is utilized throughout humanity for entertainment, connection, and pain treatment. I am, in fact, slightly ashamed of myself for immediately believing it would be a mere anti-technology tirade in the form of interpretative theatre. I had never considered that the “digital body” could be a positive concept, one that gives those with bodies society deems lesser an equal footing in communication and participation. 

In the end, Eve Leigh and Rachel Bagshaw’s Midnight Movie is a challenge to playwrights, directors, dramaturges, and designers everywhere. How can we not only make stories accessible to all, but make them representative of all? There is no perfect formula, of course, but Midnight Movie is a striking example of how experimental new forms of theatre make allowances for accessibility and representation that would not fit well into the traditional theatrical mold. In the past, I often shied away from shows labeled as especially “experimental.” Now, I think that “experimental” is the wrong term entirely. When faced with how to categorize Eve Leigh’s Midnight Movie, the word that comes to mind is “innovative.” Indeed, she is inventing a new genre of performance, one which can only be described as fresh, forward-thinking, and inexplicably important. 

Photo by Helen Murray.