Nathan Geering on making accessible performance work: feeling the fear and doing it anyway

Part 2 of an interview with Nathan Geering; accessibility innovator, theatre maker and chief executive of The Rational Method.

What do you think are the key challenges facing artists trying to integrate accessibility within their creative practice?

The first key challenge is fear. They are just afraid. Afraid to ask questions, to just try stuff, to fail. That’s the biggest hurdle. They are afraid to offend somebody, afraid to look stupid. But if you can get over that fear and just start the work and be constantly in consultation with disabled people, you often find that it is nowhere near as daunting or as difficult as you think it will be. Procrastination is your biggest limitation.

Second to that is other people’s perceptions and expectations. Artists may feel that successful performance can only be done in a mainstream kind of way. But the ways they are used to, or have always known, may only cater for non-disabled audiences and artists. So it’s really about being able to challenge other people’s perceptions, and doing the work regardless. If we let other people limit us, new work doesn’t get made and then we don’t have a strong body of work that we can use to challenge the status quo with. It will always just be a little bit, little…