Guide Gods

Runs until February 21

It was a warm Thursday night as the crowd made their way through an archway made of crutches, found inside Victoria Town Hall. They were asked to take their shoes off, before sitting around a circular stage awaiting a performance carefully put together by dancer, Claire Cunningham.

A voiceover guy sounds through the speakers, starting the performance. In an almost biblical type of speech, he described the surroundings, including the composer, to the left of the stage, and the lady who writes the hearing impaired captions, to the right. As he speaks the screens above the composer and captions writer fill with captions.

He introduces a small woman on crutches, who walks through the archway. Claire begins to sing, an angelic voice, while she acknowledges each and every person in the audience, shaking their hands as she makes her way round the stage. She then climbs up the stairs and sits on top of her crutches, feet barely touching the floor, as she addresses the crowd.

She talks about finding the means of world peace (kind of) – the cup of tea.

The performer says she’s spoken to all sorts of people from different religions and cultures, and all of them love a cup of tea.

“The thing is, I bloody hate tea”, she tells the crowd.

Claire then shares stories of where she’s met people in different cultures with disabilities and without, their opinions and beliefs about it, and how they all differ. She uses cups of tea placed around the stage to explore these opinions, picking up the cups to hear grabs of scepticism, acceptance, or understanding.

Claire states that people don’t like the grey areas, but that nothing is black and white, revealing that people shouldn’t be categorised as ‘normal’ or ‘disabled’ in a theatrical piece that was not quite dance, not quite theatre, nor singing, but a mix of all three.

Originally published in X-Press Magazine