Inclusive theatre-making on the stage: The case of Rebekka Kricheldorf ’s Homo Empathicus (2014)

The play Homo Empathicus (2014) describes a hyperempathic community by bringing the ethic of political correctness to its extreme. This utopian society is dominated by language taboos: words such as ugly, suffering, and deficiency are banned. In this brave new world, where all conflicts are avoided, disability plays a major role. In fact, one of the protagonists is the deaf-mute Sam, who refuses the linguistic rules of his community. He complains about those who have befouled the park that he, as a gardener, is required to keep clean. He even avoids going to language therapy to cure his aversion to Jerusalem artichokes. In this play, disability, far from serving as a metaphor of virtue or lending itself to an ideological reading, represents Sam’s path toward freedom. Our paper aims to provide a case study of inclusive theatre-making by analysing the production of Homo Empathicus by the company Teatro a Rotelle (Wheeled Theatre) at the University of Verona. This company is composed of non-professional actors, mostly students both disabled and non-disabled. Accessibility plays a crucial role in staging as Sam uses sign language, which has to go through an intersemiotic translation for both the actors and the audience. For example, the visual stimuli have to be transformed into acoustic signals for our blind actors. Another issue concerning accessibility are the dances described in the text, as some of the actors are wheelchair users. One of the dramaturgical challenges of this production is that the text of Homo Empathicus is focused on the diversity of Sam solely, while on the stage our actors manifest different disabilities. Building up on this case study, our paper aims at bringing together practical experience and theoretical knowledge on accessible theatre combining different research fields such as Dramatics (Johnston 2016), Translation, Accessibility and Disability Studies