Abstract:
Current understandings of working with neurodivergent students in actor-training centre around reasonable adjustment and ‘bolt-on’ support structures, designed to support neurodivergent students in an environment and training that is inaccessible to them. Performer training institutions use the language of the neurodiversity movement, but operate in a way that is more aligned with the medical model and ideas of pathology. With this, an approach is taken to neurodiversity which is not actually aligned with the current principles of the neurodiversity movement.
In contextualising this, I explore the gaps in current literature around performer training and neurodiversity, and make observations around institutional resistance to considering the perspectives of neurodivergent students.
In this provocation, I explore how ideas from phenomenology can allow for new innovations in integrated access for neurodivergent students, considering what an actor training space that integrates a neurodiversity-affirming approach could look like. In doing this, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception (1945); Phillip Zarrilli’s (towards) a phenomenology of acting (2019) and ideas of neurophenomenology. (Thompson, 2005; Di Bernardo, 2022) The result is a proposition of how centring subjective experience can allow for a more neurodiversity-affirming pedagogy.
BIO:
Zoë Glen is a neurodivergent practitioner and researcher with interests in neurodiversity and access in actor training; She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Kent, investigating the experiences of autistic student-actors on BA acting programmes.