March 2017, Granollers, a town half an hour’s drive from the centre of Barcelona. From the top of the hill, I can see the jagged peaks of Montserrat, the beloved mountain of Catalunya made of asteroid style rock formations, holding an ancient monastery, accessible only by perilous cable car. I want to climb it. I will climb it but not until 2025 after eight years of returning to the hill. At the top of the hill is a special school, Centre D’Educacio Monserrat Montero. Here the autistic children and teenagers are greeted from their buses and taxis by the staff with open arms, receiving hugs and kisses as if it is Christmas every day. How utterly different from schools I have worked in, where at their most extreme, police search for guns and discipline is everything. The combination of the people’s kindness, the scent and colour of the Spring Mimosa with Monserrat on the horizon ensure me I must be dreaming, and I if I should wake, I will cry to dream again.
I’m rehearsing my production of The Tempest with twelve autistic teenagers. I’d made the show in 2014, using games that I’d developed with autistic people since 2002, performing it in English in the UK and the US. Through quirks of fate, the telling of which demand a Substack of their own, now in 2017 I’m invited to create the show in Catalan in collaboration with Teatre Lliure and their company of young actors. Their “Joven Kompanyia Lliure”.
The eight actors play my games with the twelve teenagers and together they make my work fly, they give it wings, they shake it until it ripens in their sun and returns to me with its music, that had been lying dormant and ready, present and clear. They syncopate the rhythms, they sing their own tunes, they find the funny bone where I had only seen the serious. They never ever ask me “Is it OK to touch the participants?’ Their bodies are available, becoming the architecture of the play and the climbing frames for the participants. I’m home, I’m alive, I’m inspired. Anna is twelve years old, she is autistic, and she plays these games as if she has always known them. Her mother films her in her bedroom setting out her toys in a circle and making heartbeats with them, changing their faces and saying Hellos, before her bedtime. Anna asks us to make her a hugging game which I do for my next show and bring it back to her the following year.
We perform the show at the prestigious Teatre Lliure in Montjuic on a Sunday morning with our group of twelve autistic teenagers taking centre stage with the actors. Up till now, I’d insisted that performances (held only in the UK and US at this point) comprised only two audience members per participant, keeping the outer circle of audience small to avoid an overwhelm. The Sunday morning in Barcelona 2017 smashes that idea as, in true Catalan style, families come together to celebrate each other. “Our autistic family member is performing at Teatre Lliure? We’re not missing this”. I’m standing outside the theatre an hour before we start and I see whole groups of families walking toward me. Thay are dressed up for the occasion; mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, babies, grandparents, siblings and neighbours, at least ten people for each of the participants and then the same amount for each of the actors not to mention the staff at the theatre.
So, we are packed, we could be sold out ten times over, and I learn that it doesn’t matter what the number is, what matters is why that number are there. The listening of everyone in the audience is intense because they need to be there, they want to be there, and they never want to leave. At the end of the performance all the families want to speak to me. But they can’t speak because they are crying so hard, so they hug me. They form a queue to hug me. They hug me because their loved family member has been seen, known, celebrated and adored for the beauty they know them to possess. We have witnessed each person for the unique and incredible attributes they have; we’ve created bonds of trust and rapture that cannot be broken.
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