♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate their
time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with Rachel Marks, who is a practicing,
relaxed performance consultant who helps artistic organizations to welcome the
neurodiverse and disability communities to their venues and performances.
You can find the resources mentioned by Rachel Marks during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
Hello everybody.
Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today I'm with Rachel Marks, who is a practicing
relaxed performance consultant who helps artistic organizations to welcome the
neurodiverse and disability communities to their venues and performances.
Welcome, Rachel.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for being here today.
Can you tell me a bit about your background?
What studies did you do?
What brought you to what you're doing today?
Great, thank you.
So hi, I'm Rachel Marks.
I use she and her pronouns.
First, I'd just like to say that I'm joining you today from what is currently
referred to as Leeds and Grenville county, but is the traditional lands
of the Haudensaunee, Anishwakee, Mississauga, and Algonquin peoples.
This area is covered under the Crawford Purchase of 1783.
I'm an immigrant to Canada.
I moved to Canada when I was seven, and I am just in awe of the beauty of this
country and all that has been done by the traditional caretakers of the land
to maintain the delicate balance of ecosystems on the land,
in the water and in the air.
And my hope is that I can learn from those who cared for the land before me
so that I can continue that work with the honesty, love and wisdom
that's been shown by original peoples.
I'm from a family of theatre artists.
My grandfather was a playwright and a producer in the UK and
my dad was actually a stagehand and a designer and was one of
the first people in his small community to create running water on stage.
So I guess you could say that theatre's in my blood, it's part of my history.
And even though we were very much into theatre, I did grow up
on a farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and that's - the Niagara-on-the-Lake
of the time period that I grew up in is vastly different from now.
Viticulture and the Shaw Festival have taken it to a place of world renown.
But back then we're all farmers and the theatre was much smaller
and it was a great place to live and grow up
and have that natural beauty, but also the theatre.
I got to go to a school of performing arts.
And after school and after university, I worked at many places in Toronto
in box offices and front of house in theatres around the city.
When I began working at Roy Thompson and Massey Hall in 2000,
and towards the end of my time there, which was around 2007,
I had the opportunity to hire artists
for a lobby event, like a reception.
And for the very first time I hired a disabled artist.
And that was a changing point for me.
It really was.
There was these beautiful dancers, a wheelchair dancer and a non wheelchair
dancer, and they performed at this very sort of high end reception.
And that's when my mindset began to change.
Around about that time or shortly before that, I had been involved
in an accident and on my way to work and I had been hit by a car.
And that changed my life.
At the time, I didn't know how the positive,
I couldn't see the positive things that had been impacted
and I hadn't come to terms with my disability yet, you know, now look back on that time
and realize that I had some very ingrained ableism within myself and, you know,
that took a while for me to deal with.
So even though I was working and hiring disabled artists and had nothing
but respect for them, when it came to myself, I was like, oh, wait a minute.
So once I sort of began that work,
my whole paradigm shifted.
Everything changed for me.
I moved back to the country, I left the city,
I actually took time out of the arts.
I ran a small theatre school here in the village that I live in.
I mean, there's only 350 people of us, It was small.
But I began working in autism.
I worked for an autism agency, creating events and learnings
for autistic children and youth and their families.
And I began to really see the way
that the arts can impact disabled folks
by being involved in the arts.
So in 2018, I was extremely lucky to get into the artist's track
of the Big Umbrella Festival at the Lincoln Center in New York City.
And that was the first month long festival of arts for autistic children.
And at that festival, we had an opportunity to learn
from companies that were creating sensory immersive theatre for autistic children
and children with other disabilities, which led me to apply to and get in
to the Oily Cart Training in London, UK, in 2018.
So Oily Cartt are the company that kind of started the sensory immersive
theatre movement and allowing folks to create pieces specifically
for neurodiverse children.
So when I came back from the UK, I began to combine my work in autism
with my work in the arts.
And there was this new Field in Canada.
I mean, in the UK, relaxed performances have been around for a long time.
And really, if we look at original indigenous presentation in Canada,
that's the original relaxed performance.
But what we're talking about today, this new relaxed performance movement,
it was very small in Canada.
It was happening, and it was happening in these great disability focused
companies and these companies that understood that everyone
should have access to the arts, right?
It's a basic human right.
And so relaxed performances started becoming more widespread.
And so I had an opportunity to start consulting on relaxed performances.
It seemed like the perfect marriage of my theatre skills and
my time and my learnings with the autism community.
So since then, so I think I worked on my first relaxed performance in 2018.
Since then, I've had amazing opportunities to work with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra,
the National Ballet of Canada, the Canadian Opera company,
Soulpepper Theatre, Harbourfront Centre,
and many, many community theatre companies as well.
And I've also had the opportunity to -
In 2022, I spoke in Belgrade at the IETM Focus meeting.
They are a network of contemporary arts workers across the world,
and I spoke on disability and working conditions in the arts.
I've also spoken in the UK with ticketing professionals.
And just in March, I had an opportunity to lead a workshop
at Out the Woods Festival in Cape Town.
So it's great to be able to spread the love of relaxed performance
and to work with companies and to just keep
moving towards that idea that the arts are for everyone, and everyone should have
access to the arts and be able to participate freely in the arts.
Yeah. I am really privileged to be able to have found
that way in my own career, to move towards something that
I truly believe is, as I said, a fundamental human right.
Thank you.
And I also wanted to, for the audience who is listening to us,
what is it exactly, a relaxed performance?
And how do you work with the theatres and venues and festivals to create
relaxed performances in their spaces?
Yeah. Thank you for that.
So a relaxed performance is designed to be, I'm just gonna say, a kinder,
gentler version of a show.
For me, a lot of work, it's pre work.
So we create a comprehensive venue guide, which takes folks through
the entire process of coming to, attending, and leaving the venue.
So very venue specific.
So if a lot of the companies I work with, they don't maybe
have their own space, they rent a space.
So we do create venue guides, even if it's not the space that the company lives in
or works - or owns.
Things like parking.
How much does it cost to park, and how do I pay?
Because I don't know about you, but for me, every time I get to a parking lot,
if I have a credit card, they only take coins.
If I have coins, they only take cash.
And that kind of information, like, if you know it ahead of time,
it can really make your journey easier. It's prepping, right?
Forewarned is forearmed, is that old saying, and I feel the same.
So the venue guide should be very specific.
For instance, when we did the first one for the National Ballet.
So they perform at the Four Seasons Centre.
Lovely building. I believe it was built around 2006, 2008,
somewhere in that time period. They have this gorgeous, huge, accessible washroom
on the second floor, large enough for big mobility devices to turn around completely,
which, as you know, is rare.
And so it's great.
But there's no button.
There's no push button.
So, you know, in the guide, we say, hey, we have this. It's great.
But we also have to own that we don't have this button.
So one of our ushers will gladly open the door for you if you're by yourself
or, you know, think of bringing a family member or caregiver with you
if you need that assistance and don't want to ask an usher to open the door for you.
So the venue guide, venue specific.
Then we - Oh, and just to note that sometimes this is called a wayfinding guide,
and some people use the term visual story.
I'm going to talk about that later.
I don't like visual story, but I use venue guide.
Then there's a fact sheet.
So the fact sheet is content or show specific.
So, for instance, it could have a few things about the theatre or the venue,
but mostly it's about: there's a blackout here, there's loud sounds here,
and then also we talk about content.
So I worked with the Thousand Islands Playhouse
in Gananoque and we did Anne of Green Gables, beloved canadian musical.
We've spent the whole first act
falling in love with the adopted father,
the uncle, and for the name, I can't remember his name right now, I'm so sorry.
And then he dies in the second act.
And, you know, we're left to see Anne and Marissa's grief.
So we really need to talk about that because that content could be
something that someone just cannot process,
whether that's situational or whether that's something that they're
going through at the moment or that it's really just something that they're unable
to process in "entertainment."
So we put those things down because then we're building
a successful relationship with the audience.
They read that fact sheet and they say, okay, yes, I'm prepared for this.
This is a good fit for me.
Or they read the fact sheet and say, oh, no, I can't deal with the death
of a beloved character partway through.
I'm not going to go to this show.
So by providing all of this information ahead of time,
that to me is how we're building our relationships.
So even if the audience member decides it's not for me,
it's still a successful relationship because they've made the autonomous decision
that that's not for them.
I haven't made that decision for them.
The venue hasn't made that decision for them.
We haven't withheld any information at all.
We're almost just loading up all of this information
which you can choose to read or not.
That's totally up to folks individually.
But again, it's about autonomy, it's about having choice, and it's
about being able to make decisions yourself based on all of the factors.
So, for instance, when I'm chatting a lot, I use the same example,
and that is I have low mobility, stairs are really difficult for me.
And a lot of restaurants might say, oh, we're accessible, great, you have chairs
at the front that I can get into.
There's a button on the front door.
But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say 90% of Toronto restaurants.
The washroom's downstairs.
And so, yes, your front tables are accessible.
Yes, you have a barrier free, step free access at the front door.
But I can't wash my hands, I can't use the facilities.
Whereas if I had a venue guide ahead of time, I might say, oh, you know what?
I'm going to so and so's house
after this cocktail, I'm still going to make the decision
to go, or you know what?
This time I'm going to give it a miss. But who knows?
So having that information, I think, is critical.
So relaxed performance is about giving that information.
Then there's some slight technical changes to shows.
For instance, strobing.
We do stop any strobe effects.
Fog might be minimized if there's the use of fog, or directed differently,
directed completely on stage rather than out to the audience,
perhaps movement through the audience might be limited, or it's at least announced ahead of time.
So two concerts ago with the TSO -
that's the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Sorry.
We had dancers coming down through the aisles.
It was announced at the beginning of the performance,
and it was announced again before that piece started, so that people could prepare.
I also advocate for what I like to call a self removal plan.
So let's keep those back rows of the auditorium open, because
if I'm sitting in my seat, I might feel a little close and I can just
take myself back to the back rows if I need more room.
Then maybe I want to go to the lobby because I just need a break.
Maybe it's playing on a screen in the lobby, but the sound is lower,
and then maybe I really want a bigger break, or I need to self regulate.
Then there's a low sensory break space, which could also be called a quiet room,
a Zen den, a chill out space.
There's many names, but these are all part and parcel.
We definitely do keep house lights on at least 30%
so that movement can happen safely.
And we do lower any recorded sound to
a decibel level that feels comfortable within the space.
There is no sort of standard decibel level
because every theatre and every space is different.
So if I said 60 decibels, that could be very loud in a small
hundred seat venue, but it could be extremely quiet in an open air space.
So these are all things that go into a relaxed performance.
And then if we're able to, we could add on
ASL interpretation, or Deaf interpretation, or audio description.
There's so many things we could add on, but the base of a relaxed performance
is what I've just mentioned.
That's awesome.
And that's, I think, this kind of thing, you can do it and
you can extend it to conferences.
You can do it.
So maybe the auditors of this podcast
will start thinking of their own situation,
saying, how can I apply that to mine?
How do I work in my university?
How do I work in my theatre?
Do I have people with disabilities around me?
And what are their access needs?
Yes, exactly.
I'm actually also executive director of an organization called Réseau SPARC Network,
and that stands for Supporting Performing Arts in Rural & Remote Communities.
We do a symposium, a biennial symposium, and we just had it
at the end of May, and we had a low sensory break space set up.
We had one participant said, I'd prefer to sit on the floor.
So we brought in blankets and pillows, and we did announce at the beginning of the
conference, this is a relaxed meeting.
Get up, move around, don't stay seated, take medication,
eat, come back if you need to.
I mean, relaxing processes, to me is the next step from relaxing performance.
And when we relax process, then we, by the nature of that,
we become more inclusive for folks with disabilities, disabled folks,
and for folks from various cultures, newcomers to the country,
people who may not be familiar with our "rules" around attending meetings and events.
I see, yeah, definitely. That's very important.
And it's coming more and more.
So this is a hopeful thing because I see that happening more and more.
And I also see organizations doing a lot of great work.
I'm thinking of Xenia Concerts for the music, for example.
They're doing a fantastic work. Yeah, really.
Yeah, they're great.
So, speaking of projects, is there a specific project you're working on right now
that you could tell us more about or highlights or something like that?
Sure. So I have a couple things.
So one is I mentioned before, I said venue guide, wayfinding guide, visual guide.
So language.
Language around accessibility in the arts is a huge project for me.
I was lucky enough to receive a seed grant from Canada Council last year
that enabled me to hire disabled artists
and disabled arts lovers and also include
a few organizations who are already providing access to talk about language.
Right now across the province, but across the country and even
across the province, we're not using the same language for things.
So, for instance, some folks combine a venue guide and a fact sheet
and call it a visual story, because that's what historically came out of
the UK where relax performance started.
But I'm here to say, no, let's not use the term visual story,
because right away, my three points are, it's immediately exclusionary of the blind
and partially sighted community.
It's not plain language.
When you go on someone's website and you don't know what a visual story is
but you're looking for access, how do you know what to look for?
Whereas a venue guide is a guide to a venue, it's plain language.
This is the show fact sheet.
It's the facts about the show.
Once again, plain language.
And then finally, my third point is visual story comes out of intense behavioral
intervention and applied behavioral.
I can't think of what the last a stands for.
ABA, which are both "therapies" that are used
with autistic children and now autistic adults are telling us
that it's rather cruel and unusual behavior.
So out of solidarity with that community, I personally no longer use that phrase.
And I feel like I've become like a one woman advocacy against visual story.
But once I explain it, people are like, oh yeah, so language.
Why are we putting extra work on the disabled patron that wants to come to the arts
by not using the same language across the country
so that it's easier to understand, easier to access, easier to find?
So that's a huge one for me, and I'm hopefully going to be able to continue
to work on language and discovering what works for different
parts of the disability community, what doesn't work.
I'm also working on a language piece with ITAC,
which is the International Teaching Artist Collective.
I'm on the global working group for disability and accessibility,
and language is something I'm working on there as well.
It's interesting to see where we are
as Canada moves towards a social model of disability
and away from that person first language and into identity language.
And it's interesting to see where we fit in the ecosystem,
the world ecosystem of language around disability.
Are we leading? Are we falling behind?
Can we learn from others?
Can we teach others?
So that's a huge one for me.
I'm also super excited to be back at Stratford festival this summer working
on Wendy and Peter Pan, which is great.
That's coming up in July.
And I'm also working with artist and producer Erica May-Wood
and playwright Briana Brown and some other artists on a new play
called Created for Kids by Kids,
and that is a Harbourfront Centre commission.
And we are creating a play about what kids think about the future
by interviewing kids and using their language.
And my role is to ensure that the programming is
inclusive of disabled children and that disabled children have their voice heard in this piece.
And that's really exciting for me.
Nice. Actually, to come back to language.
Recently I had a conversation with members of the disability community,
but also members outside the disability community who are sometimes frustrated,
sometimes confused about the terms
that they should use to describe or to address someone with a disability.
And we had this interesting conversation
about the fact that for - in some textbooks
or in some manuals that are talking
about people first, they're saying,
okay, people first is the way you should address a person with disability.
And I had someone saying, wait, no, I am a proud disabled artist,
and I have no problem saying that.
And someone said, so how should I -
How should I address you?
Person with a - differently abled?
No, no, no, no.
You are someone with...
You are differently abled.
I am someone differently abled.
Everybody is differently abled.
This doesn't work, right? Oh, yeah.
So it's also about educating people.
And also, as you say it, right?
As you say, if you explain and you say, well, think of it
in this different perspective.
We are, and everybody wants to -
We need to respect the way people want to mention themselves,
not impose a way of doing it.
And that's a very interesting conversation.
It's still ongoing in the community right now.
Yeah, it's fascinating, right?
I think as we're moving forward in society, you know, one thing I'm really loving is
that we are announcing our pronouns and we're talking that way.
And to me, that is helping lead the way
in the talk of language in the disability community,
these intersections of previously marginalized communities
or historically excluded communities.
I think this is where these really interesting and these
vital conversations are happening.
And for me, language is a huge one. Special needs.
That really came out of the best of intentions.
I think people's hearts were in the right place when they came up
with special needs because, so I'm 50.
When I was younger, if I would have said someone was disabled,
I think every adult around me would have been shock and horror because
they had fought so hard for person first language.
Let's see the person and then...
Because back then, labeling was very negative, right?
It wasn't done with the positivity or the pride or the confidence
that it's done today.
And so I think that as we're moving forward and maybe letting people know
that, hey, the social model is taking disabled from this adjective that means
broken or not good enough into more
of a verb or adverb, where I personally
am disabled by society's use of stairs.
Could we get away from stairs, please?
There's got to be a better way.
And so I think that we do have to honor where every, each individual is at.
Every human has the right to identify and to label themselves however they choose.
I firmly believe that.
But as an organization, when I'm working with companies,
I say, we as an organization, need to make a decision.
What language are we using?
Are we sticking with the government of Canada's medical model
or are we going to go with a disability, community led model?
Right?
And so, but at the same time, you know, not everyone's there.
Not everyone's there.
And they might refer to themselves in different ways.
That doesn't mean I have a right to use that word when talking about them,
but I cannot say to them, oh, no, we're using this language now.
They get to choose.
Absolutely, yes.
And so after so many years of working in that, in this environment,
what is it for you
to work in Accessibility Arts?
Everything.
I can't even...
It's... honestly, I feel like my whole life was moving towards this.
I truly believe that until
everyone has a seat at the table
and every story is reflected on stage and every child has a chance to see their community
and themselves or hear or experience, their community's stories on stage,
we will not be a complete society.
And so for me, relaxed performance is the first step.
It's great. It's achievable by people, right?
It's an achievable first step into accessibility
and it can be a good starter.
And I think that as we sort of move towards accessibility
for audiences, the next logical step is accessibility for disabled artists,
disabled administrators.
It's like a domino effect.
We're just going to keep knocking down those barriers.
And to me, that's the most important thing.
I agree.
As a performer with a disability, I really would like to access all these stages.
Right?
I've heard stories of filmmakers invited to festivals where they're on the third -
Their film is being screened on the third floor of an old building.
They're wheelchair users and there's no way for them to get up to their own screening.
Like, what?
I don't even, I don't even understand how you can program that.
And I don't understand how we're just not thinking in terms
of the human experience. Right?
And that encompasses every experience.
Absolutely, yes.
Okay, I have a last question for you.
In the years you've worked in this environment, if you had to think of
one person or several people who motivated you, inspired you or
provided some ideas to you and who influenced you,
who would it be and why?
There's so many. There's so many people that I have had the opportunity to learn from
and just share space with, but.
So I'm just going to go with a most recent experience.
So, actually, at the SPARC Symposium in May, we were able to have a couple
accessibility presentations, which I'm very proud of.
But we had a presentation on creative accessibility
by Erin Ball and Maxime Beauregard.
And Erin and Maxime are circus artists, internationally known circus artists
that reside right here in Ontario.
How lucky are we?
And they did this amazing presentation on how to incorporate accessibility
right into the performance and the respect they had for the members
of the group who were asking questions.
The way they led their presentation and their workshop and the way
they modeled was so loving and so caring.
And it wasn't one of these, you have to do this or you're wrong.
They very much know that things have to be done and have to get done.
And the way they laid it out,
it inspired and it invigorated
everybody in that room.
And I was like, wow, if everybody in the world
could experience this presentation and experience
this love and feel the respect that's being given back to them,
I think we would have more people interested
in beginning their accessibility journey.
And I think that that's what's needed.
I understand that often we do need to advocate and we do need to fight
for our rights and for the rights of the disabled community.
But this was, this was an advocacy in a very gentle way.
It was like a relaxed performance workshop and really just wove everyone in
and brought them in.
And plus their work.
If you've never seen Erin and Maxim perform, do yourself a favor.
They were just at FOLDA on the weekend, and I believe that's online
and you can still access it.
Please do.
Their work is internationally known and of a caliber that is beyond.
And they're adding in accessibility.
They're baking it right in.
There was this piece that Erin did
where ze was on a hoop and there was
a singer songwriter behind zir, and the singer songwriter was singing
the audio description of Erin's performance.
So this is what they're meaning by creative accessibility,
just baking it right in.
And if I might, I'm going to quote Kat Germain, one of the great
audio describers of Canada, who said one time, you know, adding accessibility
is like baking a cake and then putting a pad of butter on top, right?
Like we should be baking that butter right in.
But if we're just leaving it on top, how's it getting into the cake?
And I agree.
And so this workshop by Erin and Maxime was really wonderful.
And it made it feel achievable and it made it feel like we could all do this
and it would just add these layers to the artistic content
that we're experiencing and that we're creating.
So Erin Ball, Maxime Beauregard, I love them.
You will love them. Please look them up.
And I will also try to share this content on ArtsAbly's website so that people
can have a look at these things.
Amazing.
Thank you so much for this conversation and thank you for the work you're doing
because it's really important.
Thank you.
It's a privilege and an honor to be able to do this work
and to work with other folks.
Like we mentioned Xenia and we've mentioned Kat and Erin and Maxime,
and there's Kayla at Stratford.
I mean, all of these folks that are moving everything forward,
it's such an honor to work with them.
And you. Thank you. [Laughs.]
Okay. Have a great day.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Bye.
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