THEATRE COMPANY
25 YEARS
#MyLeftRightFoot
Photography by Christopher Bowen.
BIRDS OF PARADISE THEATRE COMPANY
DIRECTOR’S NOTE - Robert Softley Gale As a young boy with cerebral palsy, the film of My Left Foot in 1989 was the first time I’d seen a character with the same impairment as me in mainstream culture. My mum raved about Daniel Day Lewis’s brilliant performance and how “he’s just so like you”. But what could I really take from this portrayal of a disabled person by a non-disabled actor? Such depictions of disability that litter our culture reinforce ideas that disabled people are victims, trapped inside bodies and in need of pity. What does this do for disabled people in 2018? So, what better way to reclaim our stories than to create a musical comedy that pokes fun at the attitudes of non-disabled people – both then and now – and makes people laugh hysterically while realising that there are other ways to look at things? It’s enormously daring of us to take this on but we think there is one person who would approve of our creative endeavours. “I have always been fascinated by the theatre, it is such an enormously audacious thing to try and captivate an entire audience of several hundred people all at once and purely for your own creative endeavours.” Christy Brown