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What the Stage and Screen Have Told Us About Disability
Urubhangam, Taare Zameen Par and other representations of disability
Speakers
Representations of disability on screen and stage are few and far between. Those that exist tend to follow tropes of victim or inspiration. These often limited narratives shape our understanding and often subconsciously ‘sympathetic’ responses. We’re now looking for new narratives.
At Exploring Exciting Text XXIX, Kavya Srinivasan and Priyanka Pal take a step further beyond what we have seen, and discuss films and plays as opportunities to start nuanced conversations about disability. How can sparking these conversations lead to a more inclusive civil society at large?
About Exploring Exciting Texts:
Exploring Exciting Texts, that began in 2017, is a series of monthly events that use a text as a starting point to generate conversation around a particular theme. The programme was started in 2017 by Indian Ensemble with the aim to engage with different kinds of texts and debates, and is now run by Bangalore based theatre group, KathaSiyah.
Speakers
Kavya Srinivasan
Kavya Srinivasan is a writer, theatre maker and storyteller. She has been on and off stage for the last ten years – acting in a variety of roles and formats. She has worked for some years in the disability sector – and is a sign language interpreter. She conducts workshops on sensitization, as well as performing arts interventions with and for people with disabilities. In her free time, she can be found reading, daydreaming and singing.
Priyanka Pal
Priyanka Pal, a documentary filmmaker with locomotor disability, started exploring the concept of accessible media for last few years. She was also invited by Complutense University of Madrid as a guest speaker on ‘Accessible Media and Stereotypes with Regard to Persons with Disability Working in Media Industry’ under the Erasmus Program, 2016. She has made several documentary films and videos accessible for deaf audiences as well as audiences with visual impairment. During her Masters in Media and Cultural Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai she explored the topic of ‘Portrayal of Protagonists with Disabilities in the Hindi Film Industry’. Her research was a combination of audience study and critical analysis of ‘Bollywood’ films.
