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For Debbie Patterson, the connections between blind and trans experiences and those of an ancient Greek prophet were made apparent through her own creative team at Sick & Twisted Theatre.
“There are a bunch of people that we train to describe plays for blind audiences,” she says, “and a third of our audio description team was trans or non-binary... so I thought I just wanted to explore the connection between blindness and trans identities. And then I remembered Tiresias, who is a character from mythology who embodies both those identities and thought it would be a good place to start.”
That start has turned into Neither Here nor There, a modern retelling of the myth of Tiresias directed by Patterson being presented at the Cherry Karpyshin Theatre at the Prairie Theatre Exchange. The character, who appears in Homer’s The Odyssey as well as other Theban plays, runs into two snakes mating in the woods and hits them with a stick, causing him to be turned into a woman for seven years. A similar occurrence years later causes him to turn back into a man, and when he relays to the goddess Hera that women enjoy intimacy more than men, she strikes him blind. Zeus, taking pity, then gives him the gift of prophecy.
Patterson, who describes Sick & Twisted Theatre’s take on the myth as a “crip-queer fable for the end of the world”, sees Tiresias’ story as analogous to the outsized control that those in power have over people’s lives in the present day.
“So many of the plays are about abuse of power,” Patterson notes, highlighting the role of the chorus in Greek drama as being that of the common people. “It gives us a mirror that we can hold up to our own lives so that we can see things from a different perspective and maybe find something relevant for ourselves within that.”
For Sick & Twisted Theatre, whose work uplifting disabled artists and audience members alike, it’s easy to relate to the experience of an outsider and relay that to an audience. The company breaks barriers in Neither Here nor There through a variety of engagement materials, including having audio description built into the show to organizing touch tours for blind people wanting to experience the show on a multi-sensory level.
“As artists, we embrace disability and the barriers it creates in order to discover things," smiles Patterson. "It’s a great creative catalyst to have a barrier.”
Neither Here nor There runs until June 15 at the Cherry Karpyshin Theatre at the Prairie Theatre Exchange. Specific requests and offerings of accommodations are in effect for certain shows. For more information on these accommodations and tickets, visit the company’s website.
