The Elephant in the Room

An SS officer, a Jew on the run, Hitler and Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god – these are some of the parts in Ganesh versus the Third Reich, all of them potent, problematic roles stacked with questions about responsibility and representation. They’re all the more troublesome when played by actors who are, to use theatre company Back to Back’s phrase, "perceived to have intellectual disabilities."

Can a performer with, say, Down's Syndrome legitimately play a holocaust victim? Can he or she grasp the enormity of that? Indeed, is that necessary – or is it enough to stand onstage in striped pyjamas? Ditto Ganesh and an elephant mask; Hitler and a gaffer tape tache.

All this makes Ganesh Versus the Third Reich as slippery as theatre gets. It begs questions of what we can’t and can’t put onstage, of who gets to make that decision, on what basis and in what way. It looks at power structures and cultural control, at the ethics of representation, art and disability.

And that’s why Back to Back Theatre is a world-class theatre company long before it is a disabled people’s theatre company. ‘Disability arts’ can be a problematic, catchall term; one that implies, unwittingly, that disabled artists can’t be artists, per se, only disabled artists; that elevates participation over attainment, reduces disability to a special interest subject and limits itself to addressing nothing else. Back to Back smashes all of that apart entirely. 

“We’re just trying to make great art,” insists Bruce Gladwin, the company’s artistic director of 14 years. “Any form of advocacy for people with disabilities comes from the fact that we’re trying to make great art.”

Since its foundation in 1987, against a backdrop of deinstitutionalisation in Australia, the company has always resisted the ‘disability arts’ label, seeking instead “the framework of a valid theatre company with its own idiosyncratic qualities.” Today, led by Gladwin, Back to Back is a permanent ensemble of actors – the last in Australia – all of whom are "perceived to have intellectual disabilities."

That phrase—mealy-mouthed though it is—is very deliberate. It sidesteps the notion of self-definition, never confirming the actuality of a disability, let alone its extent. That means there’s a layer of unknowability at work. Usually, we assume that actors think as we do. It’s how we read motivation, calculation and reaction onstage. That’s not possible with Back to Back; perceived disability – or just perceived difference – forces us to project and presume. We come smack up against our own prejudices.

“There’s this dilemma,” Gladwin explains. “Are they acting or not? Are they playing a disabled person or a normal person in this moment? We try and make as much of that ambiguity as possible. You’re never quite sure who these people are supposed to be on the stage. You’re never relieved of that tension.”

That can lead to confrontation. At a post-show talk in Brussels, following a performance of Food Court, a show that moves from a portrayal of bullying to an abduction and a murder that echoes the James Bulger case, one audience member raised an objection. “Someone said, ‘I don’t believe these actors created this work. I know these kind of people and I don’t believe they created this work.’ It was a question about authorship and exploitation, which is a great question for people to ask. People should be asking those questions.”

The incident spawned Ganesh versus the Third Reich. Company members’ interests—in Ganesh, in comic book heroes—had already led Gladwin to the idea of “an epic hero’s quest: Ganesh travelling from India to Germany to reclaim the swastika, ending in the heart of darkness, Hitler’s bunker.”

“We just went, There’s no way we can make that,” Gladwin laughs. “We didn’t feel like we had a right. Just the issues of cultural appropriation: using this symbol of a god—no one’s Hindu in the company—and also representations of the Holocaust. It just seemed fraught.”

However, that Brussels question triggered the thought of “a fictionalised autobiography of our company,” intended to explore and problematise the relationship—or rather, the perceived relationship—between Back to Back’s actors and its director. “And if we were going to make a fictionalised autobiography,” Gladwin goes on, “we figured we should be making it about something that’s really difficult to make.” Re-enter Ganesh.

The resultant show, in which a company like Back to Back rehearse that Ganesh epic, ends up calling itself into question. It asks whether an intellectually disabled actor can legitimately play Hitler, even as it has an intellectually disabled actor playing an intellectually disabled actor playing Hitler. (Got that?) It acknowledges a problem, then directly contravenes it. “I just liked the possibility that someone in the audience might stand up and go, ‘Stop, you can’t do this. Enough. Too much.’ That’s what I felt in the rehearsal room.”

Gladwin expands. During one improvisation, a company member began stripping. He considered stepping in and stopping the exercise, protecting the performer. “There were other people in the room and I could feel their anxiety, but [the actors] were on a roll. It was terrifying, but I just thought, ‘Actually, this is gold.’”

It’s a question of provocation and exploitation; of authorship, control and care. There are safety measures in place – there have to be – and Back to Back’s process, which runs over several years, is founded on the actors’ interests. “A large part of my job,” explains Gladwin, “is curating the actors’ development. I’m constantly looking for challenges for the company.” So, an actor who often works alone might be coaxed towards performing a dialogue; someone who struggles with fluent speech might work towards a Shakespeare speech. “By the time the actors have repeated it multiple times in rehearsal, they’re incredibly comfortable with it – almost too comfortable.”

There’s a deeper question of consent, though. Just by stepping onto a stage, the actors signify their own disability. They can’t do otherwise. Are they aware of that? Are they in control of it? Gladwin’s not sure it matters: “When you’re making something, why not use everything to its fullest, including how an actor looks onstage? Why deny yourself half the palette?” There are, in other words, layers of meaning at work; one from within the work, one from outside of it. It’s problematic, yes, but that’s the beauty of it – and it’s why Ganesh… is so full of signs and icons. As Gladwin says: “I like watching theatre that scares me.”