Award- winning Crip Queer Punk Cabaret-Theatre Not Your Circus Dog Collective! ​

Ness, O. Saur, E (2025) Boundary Breaking: Intellectual Disability, Autism, and Theatre, Fagbokforlaget

DOI:10.55669/oa6208

Based on three theatre companies – Access all Areas Productions from the United Kingdom, Back to Back Theater Company from Australia, and Teater nonSTOP from Norway – the book illustrates a rich and exciting artistic field through examples and images. Here, we encounter actors who move audiences with innovative and, for many, surprising artistic expressions, and who create existential encounters with their audience. The book aims to develop understanding and knowledge about how to conduct skills development and collaborate with actors who have intellectual disabilities, autism, or others who experience barriers to participation. The companies presented challenge power structures both on stage and in the industry, and the current situation is discussed in light of the historical development within the field of disability. In an entertainment industry where both theater and streaming services demand greater diversity, both individual and systemic knowledge are required for actors with intellectual disabilities and autism to receive good working conditions and thereby be able to realize their artistic potential. As Ingrid Lorentzen writes in the foreword to the book: «New generations of artists will be inspired by the work of the artists discussed here. Artists who should not be written into a history of exclusion or opposition, but who, with central artistic contributions, put people first.»