CRIPtic Arts: The Acts – Barbican, London

Writers: Stephen Bailey, Peyvand Sadeghian, Matthew Robinson, A C Smith and Rachel Gadsden

Director: Jamie Hale

An anthology of pieces by disabled artists, The Acts by CRIPtic Arts takes the audience to the moon and back, thinks about the deconstructed nature of performance, explores the value of life and the legacy we leave behind. Celebrating disability arts, this highly inclusive showcase offers audio-description, BSL and captioning introduced by Sahera Khan, who interviews some of the artists and performers in a pre-recorded film shown before each piece to discuss their work in its cultural and political context.

Stephen Bailey’s opening discursive show named Autistic as F***is an entertaining riff on the characteristics, definitions and expectations placed on people with autism. It’s a thoughtful dive into the construction of performance that comes full circle when Kat Dulfer Theo Angel and Evlyn Oyedokun reflect on the masks they wear on and off stage, the blending of real life with this show, and Evlyn’s inconsistent dislike of being looked at. Covering the flattening of the language in official diagnosis and the pressure of ‘representation,’ Bailey’s work enjoys tying itself in knots about what to include in a show that’s over before they decide.

There is a less clear vision for Peyvand Sadeghian and Matthew Robinson’s short play Over the Moon that places two characters in a mission control room interacting with videos, records and moon landing memorabilia. Taking a while to settle into its narrative, this abstract piece comes together when a video of Buzz Aldrin discussing his depression and the decision to publicise it unites some of the earlier scenes and dialogue, but it could better draw out the internal, external and off-world experiences more fully.

The second half of The Acts is far stronger, opening with A C Smith’s beautifully performed story of motherhood and cancer staged as a spoken letter to her daughter, who is currently six years old. Smith talks about the experience of nursing a young baby while undergoing major surgeries and chemotherapy treatments during the pandemic, but To Rose on Her 18^th Birthday uses the stages of the child’s development as the point of interaction, which gives this monologue pace and depth. Delivered with calm assurance by Smith, who supplies photographs from these years, this is nonetheless a raw and intense exploration of mortality and legacy.

Rachel Gadsden concludes this curated production in some style with a performance art piece that engages with nineteenth-century eugenicist Francis Galton and Gadsden’s own experiences with contemporary medicine, including plasma donation. PostHuman has an 80s punk energy, a highly political purpose that infuses the visual design, as well as the art Gadsden is producing accompanied by Freddie Meyers’ music. The sense of being connected to shared bodies around the world is fascinating while Gadsden is directed to paint and create by a narrator who sets the rhythm for her “survival activism.”

This evening of work supported by CRIPtic Arts offers a curated platform that explores the diversity of work being created while interacting with some of the expectations, labels and assumptions by disabled artists – as the introduction to PostHuman suggests, “all art is political, but especially this.”

Reviewed on 8 November 2024