Unspeakable Conversations, Galway International Arts Festival: A clever and compelling production
In 2003 the late American lawyer, author and disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson wrote a famous article for The New York Times Magazine. Titled Unspeakable Conversations, the piece focused on Johnson’s Princeton University debate with the Australian philosopher Peter Singer.
Singer’s appointment as Professor in Bioethics at Princeton had led to outrage among disability rights campaigners. The Australian’s advocacy of euthanasia for certain categories of disabled children was, unsurprisingly, a particular point of controversy.
This new play – co-produced by Irish theatre company Once Off Productions and the Galway International Arts Festival (the 2024 edition of which this premiere is part) – takes Johnson’s magazine article as its starting point. Written by Christian O’Reilly (in collaboration with Olwen Fouéré and the disabled English actors Liz Carr and Mat Fraser) this is a clever and compelling work for two performers.
Carr and Fraser have, respectively, muscular dystrophy and thalidomide-induced phocomelia. The play intercuts considerations of the Johnson / Singer dispute with the actors’ reflections on their own life experiences.
From the outset, when Fraser wanders onto the minimal set (representing the stage of the Princeton debate), it’s clear that this is a production that is very much aware of its own theatricality. The actor (who has short arms on account of his condition) begins the show with long, plastic arms protruding from his jacket.
It isn’t long before Carr is on-stage in her power wheelchair telling Fraser to ditch the fake limbs. In response, he suggests that Carr really wanted to be performing the piece alongside Ralph Fiennes.
This humorous opener is an excellent, expectation-busting way to introduce a play about such important and difficult subject matter. Yet, it also carries an important point.
Why, Carr and Fraser ask, shouldn’t a disabled actor play the non-disabled Singer? After all, non-disabled actors play disabled characters all the time.
When the piece turns to the debate between McBryde and Singer, we find ourselves in extremely contentious territory. As McBryde reflects, Singer’s belief in “selective infanticide” points in the direction of eugenics.
The play acknowledges that there is an inherent imbalance in the script, in the sense that O’Reilly had McBryde’s magazine article and other notes to draw upon, whereas Singer wrote no notes for the Princeton debate and did not provide any when requested. However, a quote from Singer’s book Animal Liberation – in which he suggests that animals such as chimpanzees and pigs have more potential for fulfilled lives than some people with disabilities – does nothing to dispel parallels with Nazi eugenics.
When the pendulum swings to the actors’ candid and humorous reflections on their own sexual lives, the performers’ autobiographical honesty makes its own case regarding the fulfilment of disabled lives. Expressed by means, not only of language, but also comic choreography, smart lighting and an appropriately diverse musical score (that ranges from Rage Against the Machine to Aretha Franklin), this is a brilliantly performed, thought-provoking and powerfully engaging 70 minutes of theatre.
Until July 27. Tickets: +353 91 566 577; giaf.ie