‘Severe’ Sensory Theatre: Building Relational Disability Politics during UK COVID Lockdowns

Abstract

This article examines the COVID-era shift in the disability politics of sensory-theatre artists in the United Kingdom who create work for neurodiverse young audiences, arguing that the pandemic pushed them toward a more expansive and overtly political understanding of disability. I examine the work of three companies – Oily Cart (London), Frozen Light (Norwich) and Spectra (Birmingham) – who adjusted their practices to embrace their audiences’ shifting access needs, including those in caregiving roles. These changes move sensory theatre into a more politicized realm, echoing calls from crip studies scholars and disability justice activists to reimagine disability as a relational category from which solidarity can arise that does not hinge entirely on medical diagnosis. These artists’ renewed commitments to relational access provide lessons for performing artists and audiences navigating how to care for one another through the massive death and disablement of the ongoing pandemic.