Specialisterne: leveraging the unique skills of Autistics at competitive market terms

[Visionary7903]

London’s Oily Cart Theatre Company has been the subject of the last two posts. Tim Webb, Artistic Director of Oily Cart, has said that many young people on the Autism Spectrum seem to get a great deal of pleasure from quite extreme movement, for example through the use of trampolines. In the same vein, and to engage the senses, Oily Cart undertook a production in hydrotherapy pools–‘Pool Piece’…

…[The production is] touring special schools …who find their hydrotherapy pools transformed for a week with underwater lighting, a great circular waterfall, mysterious mists and giant, gurgling bubbles.
The audience is highly select: two children and their carers or parents in the water, and teachers, family members and others watching on the poolside.
And the performers - poets and musicians - are in the pool too, wearing waterproof costumes and headgear to indicate their roles as Sponge, Umbrella Man and Gong… There are songs and a script, but many of the children have little or no verbal language and respond with smiles, sounds - and squirts of water.
But respond they do…

A few pictures from ‘Pool Piece’ can be viewed via the following links:
THEATRE IS…APPLE CART
POOL PIECE

(sources: Interview with Tim Webb, Artistic Director of Oily Cart | London Theatre Blog; Drop of excitement - Resources - TES)