Dramatizing Blindness - Devon Healey

Joeita speaks to Devon Healey, assistant professor of disability studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, about her research into the dramatization and perception of blindness in theatre.

Healey is also an award-winning actor, co-founder of Peripheral Theater and the author of “Dramatizing Blindness: Disability Studies as Critical Creative Narrative,” which came out in 2021.

Highlights:

• “What is Blindness?” - Opening Remarks (00:00)
• Perceptions of Blindness (01:10)
• Introducing Devon Healy; Actor, Assistant Professor of Disability Studies & Author of “Dramatizing Blindness” (02:05)
• The Many Conceptions of Blindness (02:56)
• Interrogating Sightedness (06:23)
• Simulating Sighted Behaviour (09:28)
• “Blind” Performers & the Sighted Blindness Consultant (12:35)
• Relationship Between Theatre & Blindness (16:08)
• Academics & Dramatizing Blindness (17:29)
• Rainbow on Mars (18:56)
• Immersive Descriptive Audio (20:07)
• Radio Plays & the National Ballet (22:34)
• Kaleidoscopic Feelings of Blindness (26:22)
• More from Devon Healey (31:20)
• Show Close (32:02)

Guest Bio

Devon Healey is an Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. All of her work is grounded in her experience as a blind woman guided by a desire to show how blindness specifically and disability more broadly can be understood as offering an alternate form of perception and is thus, a valuable and creative way of experiencing and knowing the world.

She is the author of, Dramatizing Blindness: Disability Studies as Critical Creative Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Devon is an award-winning actor and the co-founder of, Peripheral Theatre. In 2020 she was awarded a commission by Outside the March (Dora award-winning Toronto theatre company) to both write and perform in, Rainbow on Mars, a sensory reclamation of blindness. Prof. Healey teaches courses in critical disability studies.

Follow Devon Healey on X (Twitter) -@devonkhealey

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