★★★½☆ Putting disability on the record in a gently provocative dance-theatre work

Carriageworks, Sydney
August 17, 2016

Is it offensive to portray a disability on stage that you don’t have? Is it OK to poke fun at sign language or attempt to speak on someone else’s behalf? Where does personal space begin and end? How much of our true self is it advisable to reveal to the world? Off The Record asks all kinds of questions, while playing with preconceptions and misconceptions to do with disability and ways of communicating – and it does so in a thought-provoking, gently amusing and, at times, touchingly tender way.

Produced by Force Majeure in partnership with Dance Integrated Australia, Off The Record was commissioned by Carriageworks under its National Arts and Disability Strategy, New Normal. Force Majeure was founded in 2002 by Kate Champion and has developed a reputation as Australia’s leading dance-theatre company, creating devised works about contemporary Australian life. This is the first work by the Company’s new Artistic Director Danielle Micich, who has co-directed with Philip Channells of Dance Integrated Australia.

^{Photo by Zan Wimberley}

It features a diverse cast of five engaging...