Arts unravelled: How do you make an accessible theatre show for disabled children?

It’s a question we ponder a lot here at the Southbank Centre, and not strictly about theatre shows. How do we ensure we’re staying true to our aim of making the arts as accessible as possible?

And within that, how do you make sure that performances are not only accessible, but also entertaining for audiences with additional needs? To get a better idea we spoke to some experts; the theatre company Oily Cart who are brought two shows – Great Big Tiny World and When the World Turns – to the Southbank Centre for tthe 2025 edition of our Imagine Festival.

Founded 40 years ago, Oily Cart make shows for and with young people who are, as they put it ‘gloriously unaccustomed to the shoulds of traditional theatre’, such as staying still or keeping quiet. For four decades they have been happy to break apart what theatre should be, and instead see what happens when you follow children’s lead. The result is what they have termed Sensory Theatre, a much more accessible and inclusive type of theatre, and so we should start by finding out a little bit more about that.

What is Sensory Theatre?

Take a deep breath. Feel the weight of your body against your chair. Tilt your head. Stretch your body. Looking straight ahead, become aware of the space around you. Build a full picture, taking in what’s in front and on each side of you. And… relax. You’ve just used more than five senses. As well as sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, we have a sense of balance, of where our body is in space, a sense of movement. In fact, we have up to 33 senses that help us perceive and understand the world, support us to move through it, and contribute to our wellbeing.

By using more of your senses, a Sensory Theatre show doesn’t just appeal to your brain, but to your whole body. Many of the most powerful and profound experiences we have, happen when we are in our bodies, rather than in our heads. Sensory experiences strip us back to what is most human, and this is where we all can meet. This approach – treating every sense and way of experiencing the world with equal respect – levels the playing field. 

Through Sensory Theatre Oily Cart gives audiences of different abilities and perspectives equal opportunity to enjoy and contribute to both making and experiencing. We welcome and celebrate all interpretations and responses from audiences into ourr shows, making them a real communal experience.

How do you begin creating a show?

At the heart of our creative process is access. So firstly we think about children who experience the most barriers to accessing theatre, and we then build out the work from there, in order to make something that can potentially be accessible for a much wider group of people. As well as physical, attitudinal, geographical, economic and social barriers to accessing theatre, we consider cognitive access. Not everyone relates to, or uses, verbal language to communicate, so creating Sensory Theatre means we’re making experiences that are not reliant on words or speech. Working in this sensory way means we can be more curious and celebrate different fields of perception and ways of perceiving.

For around 50% of our audience, their field of perception is half a metre from their nose. So, rather than make an end-on performance, we create two different playing spaces; up close and personal, and an atmospheric ‘global playing’ space. We shape our shows to have different mental processing times attuned to different communication styles. When performing we’ll interact with each person in the audience and follow their lead in what’s interesting and meaningful to give a unique, live experience tailored for each individual.

This sensory-led work is only possible by creating the shows with artists who share the lived experience of our audiences, and also the young people the shows are made for. Listening to and learning from audiences leads to new discoveries of what a sensory show can be – it’s only through performing in schools that we’ve discovered the possibilities of trampolines as a performance space. And similarly, exploring the possibilities of all the senses also leads to innovation, such as our show Something in the Air which flew audiences up into the air to dance alongside aerial artists.

Who are your shows for?

By creating for and with a specific audience – be it babies for a show like Great Big Tiny World, or disabled young people who experience the most barriers to access as with When the World Turns – we can make shows that really resonate and connect. However, creating a work for a particular audience doesn’t mean its format and themes will only appeal to a certain demographic, but taking this approach leads us to becoming curious about who else it might work for, and how.

This is a very different approach to traditional theatre, and that’s because we’ve found that a show intended for ‘everyone’ can actually pose barriers for many people. Not all formats can work for everyone so we programme different types of shows each year – for homes, for community settings, for venues – so families and schools can choose theatre experiences that work best for them.

How do you decide the subject or story of an accessible show?

For us theatre and playing are inseparable and playing is the root of creativity. Our Artistic Director Ellie Griffiths and artists, together with young people with the lived experience of our audience, explore, experiment and play! In these moments, Griffiths will look for shared points of interest between herself and the others in the room, which in turn guides what might be the most interesting creative directions they can go in together. Rather than leaning on ideas of what theatre should be, she follows the desire lines of all the collaborators to discover new formats. This way, the resulting show is more likely to have a structure, design and emotional themes suited to our sensory audiences.

What is an accessible show like?

Because of the big colourful collaborative nature of our creative process, no two Oily Cart productions look the same. They might happen in a library, a hospital, a park or a playground; they might take place in a hydrotherapy pool, or even be sent out in the post so an audience can experience them in their own way and at their own pace. However the basis of the shows is the same; they are created with the audience they are for, they have playing spaces and sensory elements, the audience sizes are intimate, and the performances are interactive and child-led.

Our aim with any show is to construct an inclusive space where everyone can be themselves and be together, and to offer our audiences mirror and windows. Mirrors, for children to have their experiences mirrored back to them, and windows to reveal possibilities they hadn’t yet imagined. There is no one narrative in an Oily Cart show: each performance is unique, led by the people in the room in that moment. The magic happens somewhere between us.