Blind.

 

Woman.

 

Two constructs that manifest in my body. Each comes with a number of expectations that I layer onto myself and that are layered onto me by others. These layers are old, extending from before my childhood and into present day experience.

 

Blind Woman.

 

These ideas are not separate. I cannot “just” be blind or “just” be woman. I have to be both.

 

What does that mean? How does that manifest? How does my past define me? How do I perform “blind woman” and what does it look like to you?

 

Showing contains audio description and British Sign Language.

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My Research:

My research examines and deconstructs the ocularcentric, sighted norms and expectations (ocular-norms) that are inherent in performance practice. Utilizing my position as a blind woman performer, I demonstrate and trouble the limiting and exclusionary effects of these norms, identifying potential for reclaiming agency and autonomy over them. This research is positioned in the intersecting fields of disability studies and performance placing me as both the researcher and the researched. Using PaR methodologies in conjunction with a critical framework of crip, queer and feminist theory, I examine how my blindness can become a resistive force to ocular-norms as they manifest in tabooed and stereotypical representations of gender, sexuality and disability.