In the intimacy of a blacked-out theatre, the smell of freshly made coffee, cheap perfume and stuffed peppers becomes more pronounced. The weight of each character’s footsteps become recognisable.
Welcome to the Blind Theater from Brazil, where every scent is a prop, and an actor’s breathing and tread are their character’s signatures.
Before their Edinburgh fringe show begins, the blind actor Edgar Jacques briefs the audience on what to expect when they enter the entirely darkened space. It is a fringe first and will be an unusual, perhaps unsettling experience, he warns the sighted.
Sitting in pitch dark will “reach your other senses, and use your other senses. You will listen to things, you will smell things and maybe things will touch you, like the wind or maybe the rain.”
Before audiences line up single file, one hand resting on the shoulder of the person in front, everyone is cautioned to switch off their mobile phones and smartwatches, and to avoid stretching their legs in the small auditorium, where production staff taped out light leaking under the theatre door.
Although well established in São Paulo, the Blind Theater (Teatro Cego) production of Another Sight is one of several shows designed for visually impaired audiences being staged by the venue group Zoo for the first time at this year’s festival.
Another theatre company, Extant, has teamed up with the charity Sight Scotland and artists’ collective Visually Impaired Creators Scotland to put on three “enhanced” performances, which include touch tours of the shows and live audio description over headphones.
One semi-autobiographical Extant production, I Dream in Colour, was written by a fully blind writer Jasmin Thein. It recounts the trauma of a blind woman forced to weigh up losing her remaining eye owing to a tumour or risking cancer.
Another Sight, played by blind and sighted actors, examines Brazil’s class system and the politics of disability. It explores the tensions between a wealthy woman, Grace, confronting a cancer diagnosis, when her maid, Maria, returns to work as Grace’s domestic while she completes her own treatment for cancer.
Anxious to work again despite being clearly fragile and diminished by her chemotherapy, her presence triggers a powerful reaction from her employer. Their respective husbands, including Jacques, act as peace-makers.
For Jacques, the darkness offers him an equality that conventional theatre productions do not. Unlike on a fully lit stage, he is no longer defined by his disability or his physical movements and posture which, as a blind person, can be different from the sighted.
“We open this universe for blind actors to play not just blind characters, but the good guy, the bad guy, the princess, the frog, everybody. So in the darkness, a blind person can be like anybody else,” he told the audience earlier this week.
For Ana Righi, a fully sighted actor who played Grace, that means she has to emphasise the sound of her feet and voice far more deliberately. Facial expressions, makeup and physical movement are irrelevant. Speaking through a translator, Righi said that changes “a lot of elements … especially using breathing to express emotions”.
Actors move through the audience, which sits close to the small stage in a semi-circle, adding a spatial dimension by working in different parts of the room. Grace has “a very stiff, secure step, whereas the maid has a very timid step, like a person who’s always afraid”.
Another Sight is part of a series showcasing theatre, dance and clowning from São Paulo supported by the state government, the Brazilian consulate in Edinburgh and the local arts association Associação Paulista dos Amigos da Arte.
Paulo Palado, the show’s director, said blind actors were normally expected to play only blind characters. The approach taken in Another Sight lifted that restriction. The company realised the power of that only during their first show 13 years ago; they now have seven plays in that format.
Sensory perceptions are essential, Palado said. Those can include fans to provide a breeze or, in some shows, rain. It can be a special experience for unsighted audiences, too, who normally have audio description telling them what is happening in conventional theatre.
In this show blind and sighted people “are all in exactly the same situation. We have the same information. In this case audio description is not necessary because that language is for all.”
Another Sight runs at Playground 2 at Zoo Playground from 1–24 August
