Chicago Tribune October 14, 2007
When the arts really matter
How Chicago, British theater groups are creating a one-of-a-kind show with, about and for autistic children
To return to theredkiteproject.com, click here.
By Chris Jones, Tribune theater critic
October 12, 2007
In Rooms 208 and 307 at the Agassiz Elementary School on Chicago's North Side, it's Wednesday drama time, which, demonstrably, is cause for celebration.
"Sit down, come gather round," sings this diverse, tight-knit, theater-loving group of 21 young people with autistic spectrum disorders, "here we are together, happy as friends can be."
But the group has some new friends sitting in their precious circle.
The Oily Cart is a widely acclaimed, London-based theater company that specializes in theater for the very young and for kids with special needs. Its three, middle-age founders -- Max Reinhardt, Tim Webb and Amanda Webb -- have been invited here by the Chicago Children's Theatre to do something radical.
They are developing an original theater piece designed especially for autistic youngsters and their families. It is the first time they've taken this kind of work out of the United Kingdom.
The project began in earnest Wednesday morning in the classroom of a Chicago public school (like a growing number of public schools, Agassiz has two, mixed-age classrooms dedicated to autistic children).
But it won't end there. This isn't drama therapy or theater games or community outreach in the usual sense. This is the beginning of what eventually will be a unique original show, installed and performed by Chicago actors next spring at the Chicago Children's Museum, and then across the country.
But the show -- which will be an immersive installation with live actors -- won't ever be open to the general public. It will be strictly for autistic kids and their families to enjoy together.
Although performed by adult professionals, it is to be based in, on and around the thinking and feelings of the ebullient kids at Agassiz.
"We get asked a lot about the therapeutic value of what we do," Tim Webb said Wednesday morning, as everyone headed into the school in Lakeview. "Well, what was the therapeutic value of the show you saw last night? How about you just enjoyed it? How about just giving autistic kids that same opportunity?"
A few minutes later, the regular members of the drama circle are looking inquisitively at their visitors.
"Max had heard about our games in London," says Jacqueline Russell, artistic director of the Children's Theatre and weekly visiting drama teacher to Agassiz's autistic kids for more than a decade. "He had to come all the way to Chicago just to see them played."
Reinhardt grins expectantly. The room erupts in laughter.
David Rench, one of the regular, full-time teachers of this group, has a grin that matches his students'.
"Putting the arts in our classroom," he says a little later, "is a way for our kids to shine."
That afternoon, the Oily Cart trio is sitting in a different circle in a rehearsal space at the Biograph Theatre.
This one is made up of the mostly young actors and designers hired by the Children's Theatre to work on the show under Oily Cart's direction. They're talking about what they have just seen in the classroom.
They remark on one young person who had talked constantly and another who never spoke a word. They noticed that one boy liked to jump. Another liked to move his hands. Some kids liked to sit so close to their visitors, they were almost in their laps. Others seemed to shy away from touch.
"I had such an emotional reaction to the students," says Jamie Abelson, one of the actors. "They handled our presence so well."
"You know, if you read half the standard texts on autism," Webb tells the group, "you'd have read that bringing strangers into a room full of autistic kids would have disrupted their routine and been difficult for them."
But as everyone had just seen, that wasn't the case at all.
In fact, the kids had welcomed and enjoyed their visitors. Clearly, this was a community. But an open one.
"There's quite a lively political debate going on about whether we should just let people be autistic," Webb says. "Being an autistic person is a perfectly valid way to live on this planet. It's just that society was designed by the rest of us."
That view is echoed by many who work with autistic kids. We're all on a spectrum, they say. Some of us are just further along than others.
"I can't stand to listen to music while I'm trying to read," says Georgia Winston, the operations director of the Autism Project, a state-funded but independent group in Springfield. "I change my environment to suit my idiosyncratic needs. We all do."
Students more flexible
After a few minutes, the Oily Cart trio has advanced their thesis that autistic youngsters are more open than many to the ways and demands of the theater -- better able to live in the moment, more flexible, more imaginative and less troubled by blocks, uncertainties and insecurities.
"Working with kids with special needs," Reinhardt says, "has freed us from the constraints and the usual conventions of the arts in general and children's theater in particular."
Autistic kids aren't much interested in fakery. They're more inclined to demand the truth.
Elizabeth "Lally" Daley, impact coordinator at the Autism Project's local outpost at the University of Illinois at Chicago (and the daughter of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley) has been sitting in all day.
"We like to refer to it as a culture of autism," she says in the hallway. "They call us neurotypicals. Really, we think of ourselves as cross-cultural interpreters. We interpret what they do. They interpret what we do."
What most seems to excite Russell and Daley is the notion of creating a performance environment custom-designed for autistic kids and their families.
"Autistic kids don't get a lot of shared experiences," Russell says. "That's what we want to build for them here."
"That performance is going to be so interesting," says Daley. "They will be able to bring their friends. Their families won't have to be embarrassed about anything. Everyone will feel free."
But before any of that can happen, there will have to be a show.
Kites, wind as theme
In the early stages of this project, the words Red Kite had become attached.
It was partly an outgrowth of a book "Thinking in Pictures," by Temple Grandin, that Daley had suggested Russell read (kites are a major theme). That led to a game Russell played with the kids -- getting them to sit down on the floor, just as a kite would fall to the ground. And when Oily Cart had first thought about Chicago, they'd thought about the moniker The Windy City, as many British people do.
Taken together, those two notions seemed to suggest a show about wind.
As Wednesday afternoon wore on, ideas and shape were beginning to flow. Reinhardt, the musician of Oily Cart, said he wanted all the music to be live. Actors remembered the kids' interest in moving their bodies through space. Webb said a show for autistic kids needed to have multiple points of entry. "The audience at the National Theatre in London," he said, wryly, "is a far more homogenous group than you'd find at any special school in London."
There was talk about the need for one-on-one experiences and interactivity, as well as the need to avoid sensory overload. Webb said that their audience likely would enjoy structure and a clear sense of where the show was going next.
Somebody else started to ponder the idea of taking the kids to the place where the wind actually lives.
"What if we ask the kids to make kites?" said Webb.
Ready for rehearsal
On Thursday morning at 10 a.m., the Agassiz kids will hop on a bus, with their kites, and head for the rehearsal space a few blocks away from their school at the Biograph. And they'll encounter this show -- their show -- for the very first time.
Their reaction to what's now the Red Kite Project will inform everything that happens next.
Coming next Sunday: The students of Agassiz meet "Red Kite."
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
To return to theredkiteproject.com, click here.