SWEETIE. To 18 October.
Young People
SWEETIE
devised by Gaynor Chilvers and Sara Allkins
West Yorkshire Playhouse Schools' Touring Company To 18 October 2002 School performances only
Runs 45min + workshop
Review Timothy Ramsden 11 October at Sandford Primary School, Leeds
"I don't need pity; I need respect" is the headline message of this unique schools' piece.I'd have sat on the floor with the 9 and 10 year olds but was told I was too large – not a reference to height. An interesting start to a piece about enabling people, but maybe Ms Allkins was getting into role as the rather confident lecturer on cerebral palsy who, in this valuable piece's first strategy, is interrupted by Gaynor Chilvers' Sweetie, determined to be in charge of her own story. Ms Allins will play who she's told to play.
Sweetie, like Ms Chilvers, is a wheelchair user owing to cerebral palsy. If that sounds politically correct ability-wise, when did you last set up a theatre company, tour a play and 'sell' it to a major theatre's education department?
Seeing that Sweetie is based on her own life, I'd not want to get on the wrong side of Ms Chilvers' wheels. Not only is this someone who used a skateboard and wheelchair to turn herself into a downhill racer; she joined in protests against celeb. charity drives because they turn intended beneficiaries into cutesy victims. Sweetie is nobody's victim.
Birth was nearly the death of her – dad could have ordered support mechanisms off. Mum tells her in her teens to be careful as she's not like the others. Alongside childhood authority figures putting her in a predetermined place, the jealous yet affectionate relation with big sister Jackie and the moment when a first electric wheelchair ups Sweetie's chasing power and helps end the bullying are evidence of independence.
'Listen up and you might learn summat,' says Sweetie at the start. Chilvers' presence sweeps away the ambiguities of having an able-bodied performer play the cerebral palsy character – something she makes seem as unreal as a blacked-up white actor Othello.
This is why we do 'learn summat': to see Sweetie as a full personality, not wheelchair luggage or a 'condition'. Sandford's pupils acknowledged this in their workshop, creating pictures of acceptance, finding a vocabulary for the characters and physicalising character words. Several of these workshop exercises could have been developed to go deeper but they involved the pupils sufficiently in making their point.
Cast:
Sara Allkins
Gaynor Chilvers
Director: Gail McIntyre
Sound: Glen Massam
Costume: Stephen Snell
2002-10-15 18:05:07