The Importance of Research in Sensory Theatre: Celebrating Alison Mahoney’s Contributions
Sensory Theatre is a bold and boundary-pushing form of performance, creating new ways to engage audiences, particularly disabled audiences who have historically been marginalised. Despite its significance, academic research in this area has been limited, leaving a gap in understanding and recognition of this unique art form.
That’s why Alison Mahoney’s work is so vital. By focusing on this pioneering practice, Mahoney highlights how Sensory Theatre challenges conventional ideas of performance while unlocking new possibilities for creativity, inclusion, and accessibility. Their research not only fills the critical gap but underscores that Sensory Theatre—and its audiences—deserve greater attention and recognition.
With its ability to offer diverse ways to experience and interact with performances, Sensory Theatre has the potential to make the arts more open and accessible to a wider range of people. Mahoney’s work demonstrates how this innovative approach can shape the future of theatre, ensuring it becomes more inclusive and welcoming for everyone.
Below, we highlight two key pieces of Mahoney’s research, illustrating how their work is helping to broaden understanding and elevate the reach of this forward-thinking form of theatre.
Oily Cart’s Space to Be: Exploring the Carer’s Role in Sensory Theatre for Neurodiverse Audiences during COVID-19
Oily Cart, a pioneering London-based Sensory Theatre company, responded to COVID-19 restrictions with a season of work presented in various formats in audiences’ homes, and their production Space to Be marked a shift in the company’s engagement to include an emphasis on the carer’s experience.
Using this production as a case study, Alison argues that the pivotal role adopted by carers during the pandemic has the potential to shape future in-person productions, moving practitioners toward a more holistic, neurodiverse audience experience that challenges a disabled–nondisabled binary by embracing carers’ experiences alongside those of neurodivergent audience members.
‘Severe’ Sensory Theatre: Building Relational Disability Politics during UK COVID Lockdowns
This article examines the COVID-era shift in the disability politics of Sensory Theatre artists in the United Kingdom who create work for neurodiverse young audiences, arguing that the pandemic pushed them toward a more expansive and overtly political understanding of disability.
Alison examines the work of three companies – Oily Cart (London), Frozen Light (Norwich) and Spectra (Birmingham) – who adjusted their practices to embrace their audiences’ shifting access needs, including those in caregiving roles.
These changes move Sensory Theatre into a more politicized realm, echoing calls from crip studies scholars and disability justice activists to reimagine disability as a relational category from which solidarity can arise that does not hinge entirely on medical diagnosis. These artists’ renewed commitments to relational access provide lessons for performing artists and audiences navigating how to care for one another through the massive death and disablement of the ongoing pandemic.
About Alison Mahoney
Alison Mahoney is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where their research and theatre practice centre disability and neurodiversity in performance. Alison was the founding artistic director of Bluelaces Theater Company (New York), which produces Sensory Theatre for neurodiverse audiences; with Bluelaces, they directed the devising process for Out There! and SUDS.
They also directed the regional premiere of Will Arbery’s Corsicana at PittStages and have worked as a director, creative access consultant, and teaching artist with several organizations and productions, including for Paola Prestini’s new opera Sensorium Ex (Omaha), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (New York), CO/LAB Theater Group (New York), and Stage Beyond (Derry). Their scholarship has been published in Theatre Survey and Theatre Research International. MA Contemporary Performance Practice, Ulster University; BS Theatre & Gender Studies, Northwestern University.
Take a look at Oily Cart’s research, including ‘Being With’ in Sensory Theatre Report and The Uncancellable Programme Report.