The stage is just one of innumerable spaces which, as a discriminatory default, doesn’t typically make room for bodies with disability or stories about disability. Historically, theatre has barely even considered their inclusion – with the marked (mostly historical) exception of circus shows, often barbarously cruel, which would exploit and sensationalise difference, rather than celebrate it. Characters who have a disability have overwhelmingly been portrayed by able-bodied actors.

Benched

Benched, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, 2022. Photo supplied

Thanks to the work of artists with disability and activists, this is at last beginning to change. In a seminal milestone, this year the small Geelong-based company Back to Back – an ensemble made up of neurodiverse and disabled actors – won the international Ibsen award, the ‘the Nobel prize for theatre’, and one of the world’s richest theatre prizes. In 2019, American actress Ali Stroker made history as the first wheelchair user to win a Tony for her role in Oklahoma! – having a wheelchair wasn’t even written into her character’s role.

Benched, showing for a brief run at the Eternity Playhouse theatre in Sydney, furthers this project of arts industry inclusion, and...