In Conversation with Maria Oshodi,

Shades of Noir, UK.

Interview by Florence Low

 

You can follow Maria’s work on her website and the website of Extant, and her Twitter is @djbb09

Shades of Noir spoke to Maria Oshodi, the artistic director and CEO of extant and freelance artist, about accessibility and diversity in the arts, and fun and music and performance.

 

We would like to thank Maria Oshodi for taking the time to speak with us

 

How did you come to create Flight Paths?

 

I founded Extant (a dynamic space formed in 1997, intended to redress our invisibility as visually impaired artists and explore new creative territories). We had started exploring aerial movement and audio description delivered live in 2012 as part of a production called Sheer. After this, I wanted to explore it further so I got in touch with two other Artistic Directors Vicki Amedume (Upswing) and Kumiko Mendl (Yellow Earth Theatre through Sustain Theatre – an initiative that draws together arts organisations led by BAME people from different regions in the UK.

 

I introduced 3 blind performers, Nigerian soprano Victoria Oruari, Japanese Viola player Takashi Kakuchi and American aerialist Amelia Cavallo. Kumiko introduced us to the historic tradition of the Biwa Hoshi – blind travelling artists from Japan who would make a living through art, and we sometime later found out that from the Biwa Hoshi developed a female tradition, the Goze.

 

As usual, the female part of the history was buried.

 

Unfortunately, two of our original performers pulled out, though we had spent a number of years building up the piece around their personal stories, and we only had Amelia Cavallo left. There were only five blind aerialists in the world, but luckily Sarah Houboult from Australia stepped in.

 

Having two female blind performers worked well to reflect the Goze focus of the production now – in Japan they spent five years as disciples training with each other, following and learning from their female visually impaired guide. Towards the end of the five years, they would present to a whole audience of blind Goze, who would decide if they passed or failed. If they passed, they would travel the length and breadth of Japan as artists for their whole lives.

 

This mapped beautifully onto the telling of contemporary stories of travelling blind artists which Amelia, Sarah, Takashi and Victoria’s narratives are part of. (Although Takashi and Victoria  didn’t want to tour we still managed to keep their stories in the show through multi-media representation).

 

How do you build accessibility into your productions at Extant?

 

Our whole method at Extant is based around redefining the artistic and cultural space around visual impairment, and disability in a broader sense. We tell stories in a way that are informed by visual impairment. We perform to everyone, but creating access for visually impaired audiences is at the heart of what we do; accessibility is not just tagged on at the end.

 

In-Flight Paths, we wanted the aerial performer (who was also visually impaired) to describe her own movements in time and space, rather than the description of the physical actions being relayed by a non-disabled person. With traditional audio description, you get a disembodied voice coming through the headphones, but with our methods, you can hear where the voices of the performers are coming from where their actual bodies are physically in space.

 

When the choice of what the describer wants you to see is made elsewhere, and not from the bodies of the disabled person on stage, it takes power and agency away from the performer, since the describer has the power to describe what they want you to see.

 

There is a power dynamic in that version of accessibility, and we wanted to take back that control.

 

It’s interesting how insidious the power dynamic can be in the arts with marginalised people.

 

It’s not just what happens on stage; the assertion of us as people of colour and disabled people has to take root really at the beginning of a production, especially in a culture that is conditioned not to see us in a leadership capacity but would prefer to have a more paternalistic association with us, no matter how advanced in your career you are. It is a long journey of resistance, from the beginning when you say you want to make a piece of work, battling through to get to the point where you can make a piece of work that is truly radical.

 

Has it gotten any better throughout the course of your career?

 

We are in funny times at the moment, as in some ways things were much more innocent 20 years ago. Now there’s more awareness, but I feel the danger is that this level of awareness can be theoretical and some people don’t see their own collusion with racism, ableism and classism.

 

These are the people who assert they are non-racist, non-ableist and non-classist, giving a higher attention to issues of inclusivity, but the real issue with these established elites is that they are the first to shout about issues of equality without seeing their own divisiveness and power-play.

 

I’ve been doing the same workaround elevating the narratives of marginalised people my whole career.

 

I have access to different resources and an agency that I didn’t have when I started out, that means I can have more control over the eventual outcome now. But this doesn’t mean I don’t still have battles to face.

 

However, I can see myself returning to a more intimate space where I’m focusing more on personal content and I really want to get back to that place of being able to explore stories and the quality of my own writing. I’ll always tell the stories about marginalised people and our experiences as these voices still need to be raised.

 

Do you see your work as activism?

 

It is a version of activism, but it’s hard to see your work as activism when you always have relationships with funders and a tight framework around what you do.

 

The principle of the organisation has grown out of the movement of the 70s and 80s, the empowerment of disabled people spawned by the civil rights movement, the realisation that rights-based issues were something to fight for.

 

That radicalism has now been replaced by inclusion which feels like a dilution of that spirit, in that blanding out sometimes you feel like a slave to processes of the dominant culture. I always try to remind the Company to turn ‘everything’ around and make it, content, form, presentation relevant to us as ‘other’ though, as that is where the originality sits, not in aping what’s already out there. The harder something gets to materialise, the more of a challenge I take it to be and the more persistent I become in trying to achieve it.

Is accessibility in theatre and performance getting any better?

 

For some popular more commercial theatre, yes, but on the other hand not really as it can be expensive; though it is interesting that there is a growing desire among young theatre makers to take on the challenge of making work more inclusive.

 

There is a release in taking on other people’s views of the world to inform your practice, and for me, diversity is about that place of genuine exchange that can become part of a creative force.

 

Diversity to me means equality and opportunity at every level, at leadership levels as well, to challenge decision-makers and even the roles of those decision-makers themselves. A contemporary organisation which started around the same time as Extant is ‘Attitude is Everything’, an organisation that aims to improve access to live music for deaf and disabled people. Going out clubbing, and to gigs, the whole dance culture, had been such a vital part of my experience as a teenager and into my 20’s and to some part still is now, so I told my friend – the CEO of AIE Suzanne Bull – that I wouldn’t mind having a go at DJing.

 

My DJ name is Blind Bling, and people brought me blingy things to wear. It’s still part of my passion for finding ways of bringing people together, but it’s just a different outlet for that.

 

I created an Afro-Cuban percussion group called Besta Vista in 2000 with Neville Murray as the disabled drum tutor. I wanted to start drumming but no drum circle knew what to do with me as a blind person. Besta Vista while it ran – until 2007 – and had an ethos that was inclusive, collective and performative and people from very different backgrounds took part. I’m happiest when I’m surrounded by difference.

 

I really am interested in trying to give access to disabled people to just have fun and be able to do the same things that non-disabled people can do.

 

“We are in funny times at the moment, as in some ways things were much more innocent 20 years ago. Now there’s more awareness, but I feel the danger is that this level of awareness can be theoretical and some people don’t see their own collusion with racism, ableism and classism.”