WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO PLAY? DISABILITY AND AESTHETICS OF EXISTENCE

Abstract

The article explores the relationship of disabled persons and theater, starting with the work of the Per-Art Association. In the first part, the author emphasizes that the mode of on- togeny of social solidarity with the disabled persons did not result in their greater representation in the arts but in a lesser one. After pointing out that the presence of disabled persons on the canvas has for centuries been reduced to a mechanisms thanks to which the everyday awareness of the “common” grew stronger, and rejected with ease all that deviated from the socially accept- able norms, the author analyzes the specificity of the inclusive gestures on the contemporary theater scene. Unlike the introduction of specific characters with disabilities into the conven- tional plays, the author points out that the everyday regime of care recognizes the disabled persons as objects, which must be taken care of by someone, while the conditions of the group artistic work enable them to tailor their own character so they need not rely upon the expectations and concepts of others. In the second part of the paper the author confronts the Foucault’s term of aesthetics of existence with the theater work of the disabled persons. Appearing within a group, such persons enable a moral conversion, as the meaning of the scene movement transforms into an independent moral request. Meeting the foreign of the disabled persons, for the audience, becomes a synonym for a breakthrough in the egoistical search for the self in others, and for the actors themselves, marks a chance to break the social separation.