‘Lazy Susan’ flips the script on accessibility

Have you ever heard of a pre‑show touch tour?

For Lazy Susan, running March 19–28, Inside Out Theatre and Handsome Alice are flipping the script on accessibility by offering an experience usually limited to blind and low vision patrons to everyone in the audience.

Col Cseke is the artistic director at Inside Out, a deaf, disability and mad theatre company. The company often uses limitation as a creative brief. He says the inspiration for Lazy Susan comes from the experience of blind patrons at audio described performances, where they are also offered a tactile preshow tour.

“So before the rest of the audience comes in, we bring our blind and low vision audience members into the theater and up on stage for like a tactile tour of the set where they get to move around everything, feel like exactly how big the stage is, feel the dimensions of the set.” He says that gives them a rich mental picture of what is happening to go along with the audio description.

From there came the core question behind the show: “How could we take that cool pre-show touch tour experience and build a show where it’s a continual touch tour throughout the entire show for everybody in the audience?”

Years later, Lazy Susan brings that idea to life — literally seating the first row at a massive spinning table that delivers sensory elements throughout the play. Cseke says the experience will include touch, smell, and even taste as the story unfolds.

The plot centres on a mother and adult daughter navigating major changes in their lives. It is written to be relatable, funny and warm, echoing the kinds of big conversations and small moments that happen around a family table.

“Throughout the show, along the table are different things past, like different tactile experiences, different sensory experiences. So you’re, as an audience member, you get to sit next to the actors and then quite like literally feel or taste or hear what the actors or what the characters are experiencing in the story.”

Starring Ashley King and Eli Holt, the world premiere runs at the Big Secret Theatre in the Werklund Centre March 19–28.

Tickets at www.insideouttheatre.com