Disabled Theater

Most of the actors of the Theater HORA, 18 to 51 years old, have Down's Sydrome, usually called trisomy 21. Established actors, they present, throughout Europe, plays based on Shakespeare, Conrad and Fellini. It is because they are professionals that Jérôme Bel agreed to work with them. However, there is no question of making them take on roles: on the bare stage, they don't interpret anything other than themselves. In the same way as was done before them, under the direction of the same director, Véronique Doisneau and Cédric Andrieux, respectively former dancers of the Opéra de Paris and the Merce Cunningham company. Disabled Theater highlights their handicap as much as it makes it commonplace, querying the lines that we draw between normality and abnormality. The show recounts the meeting and the working relationship between Jérôme Bel and the actors of the Theater HORA. These actors react, freely and subjectively, to a series of proposals formulated in German Swiss by an interpreter present on the stage who then translates their answers. Their presence is as intense as it is disturbing: incapable of dissimulation, they challenge our understanding of others and our theatrical points of reference. Their bodies and singular gestures, their out-of-sync relationship to time, their weaknesses and sensitivity reveal to us, through a mirror effect, our own shortcomings and fragilities. Disabled Theater creates a visibility space for a minority deprived of consideration in a society above all governed by competitiveness. Bringing on stage these representatives of an often demeaned otherness to enrich contemporary theatre and in this way rejoin the community: this is Jérôme Bel's wager. RB

conception Jérôme Bel
dramaturgy Marcel Bugiel
assistant and translation Simone Truong, Chris Weinheimer  

with Remo Beuggert, Gianni Blumer, Damian Bright, Matthias Brücker, Matthias Grandjean, Julia Häusermann, Sara Hess, Miranda Hossle, Peter Keller, Lorraine Meier, Tiziana Pagliaro

production Theater HORA
coproduction Festival d'Avignon, R.B. Jérôme Bel, Festival AUAWIRLEBEN (Bern), KunstenFestivaldesArts (Brussels), Ruhrtriennale, Festival d'Automne in Paris, Centre Pompidou (Paris), La Bâtie Festival of Geneva, Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin)
with the support of Stadt Zürich Kultur, Kanton Zürich Fachstelle Kultur and of the Pro Helvetia -  Swiss Arts Council for culture