Clare Williams, the Chief Executive of Hijinx Theatre and winner of an Art and Business Cymru award, speaks with Luke Owain Boult about providing opportunities for people with learning disabilities, and what society can do to be more inclusive.
Could you explain to us what Hijinx does?
Hijinx is an inclusive theatre company based in Cardiff Bay. Inclusive in this context is we’re defined by the fact that we always include people with learning disabilities in our cast, so in the work that we do. We always have actors with Down’s syndrome, autism or other learning disabilities in the work that we make. There are three things that we do; we pioneer the work of people with disabilities, we produce work for people with disabilities and we promote the work of talented disabled people.
An example of pioneering is if you are a 19-year-old with down’s syndrome, up until the age of 19, you’ll go to a special school or you might, if you’re lucky, be able to go to a state school. But generally, people with a learning disability will leave school without the qualifications that make it able for them to go to college or to do an apprenticeship because you need a certain number of points to do that. We also know that there are an awful lot of people with learning disabilities who have a natural talent and charisma and a real talent for performing. Our ambition is that if you have a learning disability and have talent in Wales, then you can access a Hijinx academy within a 90-minute drive time.
Having trained our actors, we then have to create work for them. We make shows which we tour all over the UK and Europe. Every summer we’re out on tour throughout Europe with work that we made which includes actors with learning disabilities. We also do another strand where our actors are trained to do role play to help others work with people with disabilities.
We are completely and utterly serious about really finding job opportunities for our actors. One of our actors, a guy called Martin, has Down’s syndrome. Every Thursday he can be found in Tesco stocking the shelves. But Martin has an international career as a clown. He performs in France, in Germany and in Spain regularly. He is very well known in the festival circuit because he is the most brilliant clown. Of course the people in Tesco’s, they just see ‘ah look isn’t it sweet, there’s a man with a disability, he’s been given something to do to pass the time’. They have absolutely no idea that Martin actually has this incredible reputation.
So a lot of the work is to help society to overcome certain stereotypes about people with learning disabilities?
That’s exactly what we’re doing. We really do prepare our actors for the outside world. The Art and Business Cymru award that we had was specifically for the work we did with one of our corporate partners with Western Power Distribution, who have a team who specifically work with people who are vulnerable. It might be because their electricity has gone off or that they’ve lost power, or they’re left frightened, they’re left vulnerable and so they explained to us various scenarios that they have to deal with. We came up with various situations where they could try out those situations with our actors. It was enormously successful. It gave the staff at Western Power huge confidence to be able to understand because a lot of the time they are answering the telephone and they can’t even picture the person that’s on the end of the line.
What can people in general do to avoid coming across as patronising?
Nobody wants to patronise somebody with a learning disability. Most people are very, very frightened of appearing to be patronising or appearing to be unsympathetic. What we try and do is that if we can give exposure to people so you can build up a bit of a relationship with somebody with a disability, it really helps next time you come across somebody with Down’s syndrome or somebody with autism. Everybody is an individual, and there is no guide book to ‘This is how you speak to someone with a learning difficulty’.
Hijinx Theatre. Info: 029 2030 0331 / www.hijinx.org.uk