Frozen Light's Lucy Garland on making accessible theatre for people with with profound and multiple learning disabilities

For the past 13 years, Lucy Garland and Amber Onat Gregory have been at the helm of Frozen Light, a company that specialises in creating multi-sensory theatre for people with profound and multiple learning disabilities. Their latest production, The Isle of Brimsker, is currently touring the UK, and is a prime example of how to create an inclusive piece of theatre.

Here, Garland explains her motivation behind starting the company, and the process behind making the productions. 

Frozen Light came into existence while I saw studying for a masters in applied performance at the University of Kent with Amber, my fellow artistic director. We worked with a group of teenagers with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) to develop a piece of multi-sensory storytelling. We both loved this work and saw a massive value in it.

We went our separate ways, but both continued doing small scale storytelling shows for people with PMLD.  After 6 years we reunited and saw that no one was making work in theatre venues for adults with PMLD and, through our extensive work in the community, we had both seen there was a real hunger for this so together decided to start Frozen Light.

Our mission is to make accessible theatre for these audiences and tour it to theatres across the UK, with a commitment to making work that is age appropriate, and predominately for adults with PMLD. We try to tour to as many corners of the country as possible and reach as many people with PMLD as we can; these people are some of the most invisible and disenfranchised in our society. There is rarely art they can access on a meaningful level for their needs and we want to provide that opportunity.

The right to access culture (appropriate to your needs) is a basic human right, and we provide something that our audience can meaningfully access. 

Our audiences access the world on a sensory level, which means for theatre to be truly accessible for them it needs to be multi-sensory. When it comes to our productions, it means that every part of the story is punctuated with a sensory interaction.  We perform to small audiences of 6 people with PMLD and their companions which allows the performers to have one-to-one interactions with each audience member.  These interactions form a non-verbal conversation between us and the audience.

For us, access isn't an afterthought, it is completely embedded from day one.  We always start our processes asking what do our audience need from us to be able to access this piece of theatre. It isn't about taking anything away (for example, loud noises), it's about adding layers on top of each other to give our audience the best opportunities to access the piece.

It's about turning theatre-making on its head. We start with what multi-sensory aspects we want to explore and use in the production, we create an environment and theme for these to exist in, and then we build a story and characters around that.

For our latest show, The Isle of Brimsker, we wanted to explore sound and different ways you can explore it other than just with your ears. We played a lot with vibrations and sound activating lights, and the sensory elements started to emerge.

Our audience are frequently young adults and they are often having to transition from education (a school they are likely to have been in since they were 4 years old) to adult services which are often poorly funded and less consistent than educational establishments. in the current climate our older adult audiences are more increasingly being moved from their homes/usual care provision due to cost saving exercises. 

We wanted to look at these ideas in The Isle of Brimsker. We are always really interested in our productions following an emotional narrative and wanted to explore the theme of transition in a safe space and in a way relevant to the needs of our audience. 

Fundamentally, we want those who come to see our shows to feel valued in a world in which they are often excluded and ignored. I want them to leave having had a meaningful experience with a piece of theatre and the performers in it, to have found something in our show that they were able to engage with.

The majority of our audience would find it incredibly difficult to access mainstream theatre and for it to be relevant for them.  We want to fill that gap, we want them to be able to access entertainment that meets their needs.

- Lucy Garland, artistic director. 

The Isle of Brimsker is currently on a tour of the UK, and it comes to Stratford Circus Arts Centre on 3rd and 4th May.

_{Photo courtesy JMA Photography}