Bodies:On:Live – Magdalena:On:Line

Abstract

and flashes of light with expert design by Jessica Hung Han Yan. The Ringham brothers’ design allows us an intimacy with the work, and with the narrator, which satisfies an audience’s desire for closeness and contact. For the duration of the work, audience members are positioned as Saramago’s ‘blinded’ characters; much like the people of the novel, we are plunged into an experience of sightlessness and pitch-darkness, hyperaware of the bodies of other spectators undergoing the same experience. Here, the piece evokes a deep sense of claustrophobia through the closeness of the audio, darkness of the theatre, andmandatorymask-wearing; at times, these features are disorienting and suffocating. The piece as a whole moves towards an ending moment of catharsis, where the narrative of resilience comes to a climax. Spectators are treated to an opening of theatre doors and a burst of light; they are, in a sense, treated to a glimpse of somepost-pandemic future, before returning to their awareness of theethereal privilegeof gatheringwith strangers in an indoor theatrical space. I must note that Saramago’s Blindness is not without criticism from disability scholars and activists; in particular, critics have denounced the use of blindness as a trope or metaphor, or as an experience of limitation which propels its victims into a Hobbesian state of nature. Without the faculty of sight, the novel’s characters become almost-animal in their physical and moral degradation. The novel’s protagonist and play’s narrator, the Doctor’s Wife, is the only character who inexplicably keeps her vision as the blind deteriorate. This story does not give voice to the blind; it privileges the positionality of the seeing, and in particular the Doctor’s Wife, who is perceived as a quasi-beacon of hope within the narrative. At the end of the play, each of the characters regains their sight as the fictional epidemic subsides. Horror turns to hope, filth to cleanliness, and quote-unquote humanity and civilization are restored. It is clear that this is a story for the sighted, wherein horror and disability are closely associated. Despite this unignorable tension within the narrative, this pandemic-time theatrical venture has proven that art and storytelling can endure with even the most stringent of social restrictions. I can only hope that lessons learned from the creative innovations around COVID-19 restrictions can help in creating a theatre which is more inclusive towards persons with disabilities, or persons with accessibility limitations. The masterful technological feat which is Blindness is not only a particularly successful iteration of pandemic-time art, but a blueprint for future instantiations of intermedial theatre which opens up new possibilities for integrations of digital technology into live performance practice.