In News

Birds of Paradise Theatre Company is Scotland’s first touring theatre company that employs disabled and no disabled actors. It has been working with theatre makers across Scotland to make theatre more accessible and has recently teamed up with them on the National Theatre of Scotland led Scenes for Survival season, which features work that was created in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Since lockdown, Birds of Paradise have taken the company online, so they could continue to engage with disabled people, artists and audiences. Robert Softley Gale, the company’s artistic director, took part in a profile with The Scotsman, he said: ““We’ve done a lot of things online. We’ve got a weekly virtual cuppa every Tuesday, any disabled person, artist, audience, anyone can drop by and share how they’re getting on and what they’re interested in. That’s proved to be a good way for us to meet people that we’ve never met before.

“We’ve also been doing the Making Theatre Accessible events with theatre makers in Scotland who wat to make their work more accessible to disabled audiences. We’ve been planning to do that for years, but it was never quite the right time or the right funding to make it happen. Because we’re all on Zoom now, we were able to organise a big meeting quite quickly and the first one had about 40 people turn up… The second one had around 80 people, so we’re really using our time at the moment to reach people we wouldn’t have reached before. It’s been a great opportunity for us.”

You can find out more about the Making Theatre Accessible events on Birds of Paradises’ website here https://www.boptheatre.co.uk/make-it-accessible/

Scenes for Survival is a new season being promoted by National Theatre of Scotland, it consists of over fifty digital artworks that have been created from home. Each piece has been created by a quarantine creative team, with over 100 leading artists collaborating, including the team from Birds of Paradise. You can find the Scenes for Survival piece featuring Birds of Paradise on their website here. https://www.boptheatre.co.uk/scenes-for-survival/

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