A wordy birthday greeting

Today it is my dear Jane Austen's 240th birthday. (She happens to share it with one of my closest friends from first year at uni, Diviya, who then transferred to Nottingham - we've spent the last five years communicating via text and social media, trying to match schedules and meet up in person. Happy birthday, wifey! I miss you.) What these two wonderful women share is more than a birthday, though, because they've both inspired me to do things I never would've thought possible otherwise. 

Diviya and I met as cautious chorus members for Opera Warwick's January 2011 (English) production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. She brought me out of my shell and taught me that my wheels had just as much of a place on the Arts Centre stage as her (appropriate to the style of the show) garishly coloured skirt and high heels. In fact, I believe our multicultural and multi-ability chorus grouping led directly to my current PhD study, because Diviya and my other friends instilled in me further the joy and importance of diverse casting. She also gave me the confidence to put myself forward as a candidate for the exec committee the following year, as Productions Manager - a role I find myself lucky to be reprising now that I'm back at Warwick. We're putting on Figaro again - coincidence? I think not! Trips to the Dirty Duck after rehearsals gave me some of my favourite memories of Freshers and are never to be forgotten, either, since they forged friendships which I hope will last a lifetime.

Similarly, thanks to Austen, I discovered that literature and the arts are the ultimate tools for accessibility - if they are taught in an engaging manner. Through her, I learnt that I too could jump over stiles (first in my dreams, and then in reality, with help from my determined mother) and share in the satisfaction of muddy jeans, if not quite petticoats...! I also found that, if you search hard enough, the touch of disability can be discerned in almost any individual's experience - Miss Austen's being a case in point. I've probably mentioned this before, if not here then on another of my blogs, but it is believed that she and her brother George communicated with some form of sign language, he having a hearing impairment and apparent learning difficulties. Yay canonical representation (albeit covert)! Thanks for furthering our cause, Jane, and continuing a tradition started by Homer and Milton but which hardly anyone mentions!

So, yes, that's my wordy birthday greeting for two of my favourites. It couldn't be more perfect that you share a day. I love you both and am so grateful for the impact that you have had on my life - in very different but also strikingly similar ways.

Thank you!

Thoughts on Jane Eyre at the National in collaboration with Bristol Old Vic

(In memory of Gemma Watson, 26th Sept 1990 - 9th December 2001)

Ever since I first read (and loved) Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, aged ten, I've been aware that it's a highly awkward book - or, as we say on tumblr, 'a problematic fave'. The positioning of Bertha Mason as the mentally unstable, hypersexualised racial 'Other' disturbed me even then, although I didn't quite have those words to describe my feelings. So much so, in fact, that, when I finally got to study it at school in Year Eight, my English teacher gave me her copy of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea to read alongside the original novel, since it went some way to addressing these issues. Once I got to uni, I discovered the critical work (in every sense) of Gayatri Spivak, and was delighted. Through her writing, and that of others, I found the vocabulary for which I had so longed - in terms of disability as well as race, because David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder's concept of 'narrative prosthesis' so perfectly encapsulated the function of Rochester's blindness and eventual cure. It exists for no other purpose than to make a moral point, and to provide the catalyst for Jane's final transformation into an independent adult, since it is through his dependence on her (coupled with sudden and convenient financial good fortune) that she is able to achieve as close to liberty as was possible for a woman of her station at the time.

Nevertheless, having established all my difficulties with the text, I must now return to the bracketed part of my first sentence - because I did, and do, love it, though not for the reasons you might think. I'd take Fitzwilliam Darcy or Edmund Bertram (I mean, let's face it, I'm really such a Francis Price!) over Edward Rochester any day. No - I love Jane Eyre because in it (and her) my ten-year-old heart found what I still think is the most accurate depiction of how it feels to be a young girl desperate with grief over the loss of the dearest of friends. It therefore seems doubly apt that I'm writing this 'review-of-sorts' today, as it is the fourteenth anniversary of when the first of my own darling girls died, and the restaging at the National Theatre of the Bristol Old Vic company's devised production (which I watched as an NT Live screening last night) seemed to understand the ramifications that the death of Helen Burns had on Jane's development far more than any other adaptation I have witnessed.

Actually, I'd say that's true of most aspects of the plot - including the issues of race and disability mentioned earlier. Perhaps this was just a bonus of it being theatre, not film, and the extra minutes this allows for events to unfold. I think, however, that it was more due to the company's conscious decision to divest themselves (though not entirely, because the clothes were still period appropriate) of the conventions of costume drama and director Sally Cookson's desire that nothing be subsumed into the love story.

The subtitle of the novel, after all, is 'An Autobiography', and the story is that of an orphaned girl growing up in Yorkshire. The show's Jane, played with a determinedly regional accent, couldn't have been prouder of that heritage. (Interestingly, the one significant part of the book that the company chose to omit was her acquisition of wealth - a subtle suggestion that she and Rochester are essential equals, money or no money?) This, allied to the constantly resurfacing refrains of folk songs, grounded her in a sense of community and shared experience that no amount of ostracism and cruelty was able to destroy - which brings me to another important facet of the production.

The majority of the folk songs began as solos for the character of Bertha, before being taken up and harmonised by the rest of the company. Such a decision meant that she was extremely present from the very start of the piece, instead of just appearing at Thornfield, and was an important reflection of the novel's narrative as told by an older Jane who is reminiscing. It also set up a deliberately prominent parallel between Jane and Bertha, both the characters and their actors, because they were only ever themselves. All other members of the multicultural company (even the actor eventually playing Rochester) undertook multiple roles at various points, often as aspects of Jane's psyche. This made one wonder who precisely was the person with mental health issues, and provided a stark commentary on the ravaging potential of grief, which was underscored by a haunting folk-style rendition of the pop anthem 'Crazy' against the backdrop of the Thornfield fire - after which a drenched and lost Jane called out for her beloved friend Helen across the moors.

It was theatrical adaptation exactly as it should be - irreverent, yet infinitely attentive to, and enthralled by, its source material. It was also precisely what I needed to prepare me for the feelings I have felt today - grief in all its myriad manifestations and the mixed up muddle of joy and sadness. So thanks, NT and Bristol Old Vic. Thanks, Brontë. Thanks, Jane and Helen, and thanks Gemma - you were there with me last night, as you are always. Thank you for shaping who I am.

A return for #IDoPWD

Hello!

I have a flat, a suitable bed (more on that another time), and reliable internet, which means I'm back in the blogosphere. At last - and I could not have found a happier or more significant day to return, because December 3rd is the UN's International Day of People [or Persons, depending on which version you read] with Disabilities. It also marks the fact that we are pretty much halfway through UK Disability History Month, or UKDHM, which proceeds from 22nd November-22nd December, and has as its theme for this year 'Portrayals of Disability in Mainstream Media'. All very relevant to my thesis, my life, and, consequently, this blog. After all, I am a Person with a Disability (albeit one who is unsure about excessive use of capitalisation), writing my PhD on disability, and using this corner of the internet to document the intersection of these two things.

So I think today provides me with the perfect opportunity to update you, my loyal readers who are still here after nearly a month of silence, on what I've been doing in that time. It also allows me to express my gratitude for my wheels - because, without them, I really don't think I'd have my words. Sure, it's difficult (especially when it comes to access), but my experience has shaped who I am - much like it has Noujain Mustaffa, the teenager with cerebral palsy who made the journey from Syria with her wheelchair. If she can cross continents, I can definitely cross campuses. (I tried to find the most impartial report of her story to share here. Quite a number of articles deal with it in the highly-emotive language that many in the disability community, myself included, find simplistic and offensive - but that is a topic for another post.)

For now, I'll just leave Noujain's journey there as a reminder of what is possible - but, also, of how much still needs to change in our world when it comes to disability. (Change which, as a brief aside in relation to recent parliamentary decisions, is not to be achieved by using money and resources which could rebuild our infrastructure to systematically destroy that of another country - an act with the potential to create many more disabilities on an international scale through both physical and psychological injury of civilians.)

This is why I have undertaken my PhD - and it brings me back to what I have been doing over the last month. The aim of the day conference which launched UKDHM for 2015 was to investigate the sociocultural representations of disability of the past and present and, in so doing, to attempt to map a way forward and to inspire further campaigns. This is the power of the arts, but it is also the power of social media, and the two came together nicely in the fact that the event was live streamed to engage a wider audience. They also met helpfully in a presentation I was lucky enough to attend, given by the actress, disability activist and face equality campaigner Victoria Wright, who has a condition called cherubism, and who is working to emphasise the importance of an online (web-wide) community for those impacted by, and interested in, disability - especially parents and young people. She has her own blog, which I'll add a link to very soon.

She has inspired me to be more active on mine, both personally and academically, which provides me with a neat segue into my final point. Only last night, I went to a presentation given by Dr Jack Newsinger on disability arts and austerity policy. What became very clear to me is that if we, the international people with disabilities who are today being lauded by the United Nations, desire a full and worthy role (or roll teehee) in the development of our countries and our world, we have to take it - whether those who 'run' those countries and the world want us to or not.

And, with a little help from our friends (since we are all only temporarily able-bodied and a more accessible world has benefits for everyone), we might just do it - I know that's my plan.

Happy IDOPWD!