Because sensory theatre productions are designed with neurodiverse audiences in mind, practitioners are first and foremost concerned with accessibility at all levels for their audience members, incorporating multiple senses throughout a performance to allow a variety of entry points for audiences that may have wildly divergent—and often competing—access needs. One-to-one interaction between performers and audience members results in highly flexible performances that respond to physical and auditory input from individual audience members, through which performers curate customized multisensory experiences that communicate the production's theatrical world to its audience. Given this reliance on close-up interaction, the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have posed a particular challenge for sensory theatre makers. In in-person sensory theatre, performers focus on neurodivergent audience members, with parents and paid carers often taking a (literal) back seat, but remotely delivered sensory theatre during COVID-19 hinges on the carer's facilitation of sensory engagement curated by sensory theatre practitioners. 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 audience engagement to include an emphasis on the carer's experience.Footnote ¹ Using this production as a case study, I argue 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.Footnote ²

While most theatre employs visual and auditory elements, sensory theatre places equal emphasis on all five commonly recognized senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste), as well as the kinesthetic sense, or sense of movement.Footnote ³ This multisensory exploration developed out of a need to communicate with audience members who often access the world through primarily sensory avenues, as opposed to through language: a distinction that Joanna Grace refers to as “sensory beings” versus “linguistic beings.”Footnote ⁴ Because sensory theatre caters to audiences with widely varying sensory needs, practitioners make use of different access points for audience members: some may have visual or hearing impairments and therefore need to access theatre through touch or smell, or they may be hyper- or hyposensitive to certain sounds, smells, or textures. Prior to the pandemic, practitioners created immersive settings that incorporated design in a 360-degree sensibility, embracing the neurodiversity in each audience by acknowledging that what engages one audience member might differ completely from what engages another. Because audience members inevitably have different ways of responding to the same stimuli, performers are trained to observe audience members closely and take cues from carers as to what experiences—and how much of them—to offer. To facilitate this deep interpersonal engagement, sensory theatre typically occurs with very small audiences of ten or fewer neurodivergent participants and their carers, allowing for flexibility and improvisation.Footnote ⁵

Oily Cart, under the artistic direction of Ellie Griffiths, introduced an “un-cancellable programme” for 2020–1, citing many of their audience members’ needs to continue sheltering even after lockdowns are lifted and theatre venues reopen.Footnote ⁶ The season provides a range of options, both through its varied program for 2020–1 and within individual productions themselves; for the purposes of this short essay, I will focus on Space to Be, in which Oily Cart provides families with sensory props and one weeks’ worth of engagement surrounding the objects during which the performance experience unfolds gradually, giving audiences control over how much time to devote to the experience each day and allowing them to revisit experiences from earlier in the week should they desire.Footnote ⁷ Audiences receive a parcel each day with props and a music track, so that by the end of the week, they have received a full album's worth of music and corresponding sensory engagement.Footnote ⁸ The goal of this work is to engage carers and neurodivergent participants in equal measure through sensory play.

With the performer removed from the equation in remotely delivered sensory theatre work, carers must deliver a production's sensory engagement. While there has long been discussion among sensory theatre makers about how best to include carers as audience members, the question has become significantly more urgent since practitioners have begun to ask them to play such a pivotal role in delivering their product, moving carers into the role of facilitator, rather than audience member.Footnote ⁹ Prior to COVID-19, practitioners stressed the importance of engaging carers during live sensory theatre productions both as behavior models for neurodivergent participants and as guides for performers determining how best to engage with a given audience member. In this framework, (ostensibly nondisabled) carers do not merit attention per se, only as conduits for the neurodivergent audience member's experience.

With Space to Be, Oily Cart aims to engage the carer and neurodivergent participant on more equal terms, working with performance researcher-in-residence Dr. Jill Goodwin to develop an emphasis on togetherness in sensory play. Goodwin's research focuses on relationships between neurodivergent individuals and their carers, attempting to shift carers’ mindset from one of “doing” to one of “being.”Footnote ¹⁰ This echoes Joanna Grace's writing about the benefits of “sensory being” for “linguistic beings,” or neurotypical carers: she draws parallels between sensory play and mindfulness practice, and stresses that sensory play can be extremely beneficial to carers’ mental health as well as that of the neurodivergent participant.Footnote ¹¹ Griffiths noted in an interview on 18 June 2020 that caregivers often see engaging in sensory play as being beneficial only for the neurodivergent individual, rather than as something that both parties can enjoy, and that carers who look at sensory play with this mindset frequently consider it yet another thing that they have to do in a day filled with numerous tasks to be completed. Griffiths says that Oily Cart's goal with Space to Be is to make something that will “re-energize and recuperate” both parties through sensory play.Footnote ¹² Despite the project's emphasis on togetherness, however, no remote sensory theatre project can completely remove the responsibility of facilitation from the carer, so with this in mind, Space to Be can be framed as a project that emphasizes finding a sense of joy, play, or well-being in the act of facilitation.

The need to inspire joy in the act of caregiving has perhaps never been more urgent. The UK government's suspension of local councils’ care mandates for disabled adults during the pandemic—along with confusing and, in many cases, deadly misinformation from the National Health Service—resulted in a dire need for advocacy, placing further strain on carers’ time and energy.Footnote ¹³ In an interview with theatre critic Lyn Gardner, Griffiths highlights the responsibility of sensory theatre makers to respond to the increased risk for neurodivergent individuals in the UK during the pandemic, not just for contracting the virus, but for having hard-won rights stripped away with restrictions put in place during lockdown:

To make sensory theatre in this moment, as Griffiths points out, is to be invested in more than just access to the arts, and to respond to more immediate needs with regard to health, safety, and social and legislative equity. The recognition of carers being stretched increasingly thin during lockdowns, coupled with a new reliance on carers for the delivery—and, indeed, survival—of their work, has led sensory theatre makers like Oily Cart to this increased political engagement.

The sensory theatre field has always placed a strong emphasis on accessibility for its neurodivergent audience members, but the field is now grappling with a shifting understanding of what accessibility means in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. Theatre makers like Oily Cart were forced to reckon with accessibility for the “linguistic beings” in their audiences with more urgency than ever before. While remote sensory theatre may be the most accessible option for many neurodivergent audience members at this time, its reliance on carers as facilitators risks rendering the practice burdensome or, worse, inaccessible for this half of the audience dyad. The overwhelm experienced by family and paid carers may be exaggerated during COVID-19, but it is by no means a new phenomenon, and sensory theatre makers are uniquely poised to address it creatively by breaking down the disabled–nondisabled binary and considering their audiences holistically. The genre's renewed focus on the carer's role can and should extend forward into postpandemic sensory theatre, pushing the field to embrace the full range of experiences within a neurodiverse audience and giving carers a seat alongside those for whom they care.