Rachel Tucker thinks theatres need relaxed performances once per month. (Picture:Getty Images)

If you think the high cost of theatre tickets is a hard pill to swallow, going to the theatre when disabled is even tougher.

The impracticality of going to the theatre for those with physical or mental impairments is a major issue. In formal theatre environments, there are still very few answers for the needs of those audiences.

Those unable to sit for hours in a tiny seat, silently, or those who suffer from hearing or visual impairments can only occasionally go to the theatre for special ‘relaxed’ performances – but they’re all too rare.

Emma Williams thinks monthly ‘relaxed’ performances must be a pre-requisite of any major West End show (Picture: Getty)

‘Theatre can be very discriminatory,’ admits Rachel Tucker, of BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, who went on to win hearts as Elphaba in the West End production of Wicked.




For Wicked’s tenth anniversary, the show ran a relaxed performance where the audience could come and go from their seats as they needed, but these one-off occasions are the exceptions that prove the rule that we aren’t doing enough.

‘It’s vital that all audiences can feel safe in a theatre environment, and enjoy what everyone else gets to enjoy – it’s not fair,’ Tucker went on.

Rachel was speaking at the West End Wilma awards, a ceremony run by the London theatre website of the same name which honours the best in theatre each year.

Wilma, left, and Ed Baker, right, who run the West End Wilma website (Picture: Ollie Boito Photography)

But Ed Baker, founder of West End Wilma, says this ceremony’s different. For this fourth Wilma Awards, Ed’s introduced the Achievement In Creating Accessible Theatre Award to highlight the lesser written about struggles of the disabled in the theatre, and the work of those striving tirelessly to make things different.

‘I think if we are going to demand a certain level of good behaviour at the theatre, we should put equal effort in to ensuring that there are more relaxed performances available for those who would feel more comfortable if they didn’t have to sit still,’ said Ed in front of an attentive crowd full of theatre’s brightest talents.

After the ceremony, as the industry clutched their glasses of wine, it was obvious how this new consciousness was only the tip of the iceberg of a frustrated theatre community tired of the theatres without answers to the questions about true diversity.

Ian McKellen is an ambassador the Park Theatre, here with actress Gillian Anderson at an event at the theatre (Picture: Getty Images)

Rachel Tucker distilled her earlier thoughts down: ‘It’s just not enough, one performance a year – it has to happen on a monthly basis.’

‘Disabled performances should be on schedules,’ she went on. ‘It’s discriminatory against anyone who has got a disability [that they aren’t].’

Emma Williams, the four-time Olivier award nominee who worked on the UK’s first ever dementia-friendly performance three years ago, agrees.

‘It’s amazing in this day and age that it’s just so not touched on,’ she confessed.

‘We need to get all the theatres talking together. We’re always going on about how theatres are for everyone, but unless we make it for everyone, then they aren’t – truly.’

Major players cite finances as part of the reason the process is taking so long, and Williams is sympathetic.

Of the slow progress, Emma says she can ‘understand it. It’s very tricky. There’s a lot of things that we have to take into account. It costs a lot of money to implement these physical changes to the theatre, to allow these performances, but we must embrace disabled theatregoers and find a way to make it financially viable.’

The West End Wilma awards (Picture: Ollie Boito Photography)

There are companies making leaps and bounds towards the demands of London’s theatre performers. Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, invested in by Sir Ian McKellen, is leading the pack.



As winners of this year’s accessibility award, Access Coordinator Lorna Heap and Sales and Marketing Manager Dawn James couldn’t have been more thrilled.

‘It’s encouraging that West End Wilma are saying accessibility in theatre is something they want to honour ever year,’ says Lorna.

‘We have a creative learning program that engages with people living with dementia and their families, so they could come and see the shows in an environment where they didn’t feel uncomfortable, or if they needed to get up and go to the toilet and come back, they could.’

Emma Williams, who won Best Performer In A West End Show for Half A Sixpence (Picture: Ollie Boito Photography)

‘Park Theatre’s mission is to be open and accessible to everyone,’ says Sales and Marketing Manager Dawn James. ‘We do everything we can, right from the moment they buy a ticket, to buying food, to being in the auditorium to leaving the building.’

What advice could Park Theatre, who are leading the charge by offering £10 dementia-friendly performances, offer to other theatres?

‘It’s important that theatres with funding can work with smaller venues to help provide accessible performances,’ the team say.

‘It’s quite pricey and technology is changing all the time,’ confessed Heap.

‘We’re not in competition with each other when it comes to accessibility.’

Rachel Tucker, who won Best Cabaret/Solo Show for Rachel Tucker Live At Zedel (Picture: Ollie Boito Photography)

Tucker and Williams, between them, have similar ideas. ‘It needs to be in the scheduling,’ Tucker insists.

‘Theatres must do one relaxed performance, and a visually impaired one, or two, or three of those, in the scheduling, fundamentally.’

The call for technological change and financial support is, says Williams, ‘not about coming to terms with a different style of audience, but about learning what your audience requires’.


‘If your audiences have special needs, embrace it, and learn from it, it’ll make us better performers at the end of the day, and it will make our theatre productions better pieces of theatre,’ says Williams.

‘The dream is that everything is accessible – we’ll get there one day,’ concludes Heap.

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