"I have rarely encountered a book about a performance company that honors the work discussed with such grace, that manages to communicate its difficulty with such ease, and that leaves its work intact and still full of its animating and unsettling life. It exemplifies the mandate of the book series and argues for Back to Back’s central place in a range of discussions concerning disability, spectatorship, and theatricality."
Daniel Sack, Contemporary Theatre Review, 25:1.
“This book is an excellent addition to the growing area of disability studies, and studies of performance and disability, it should also be essential reading for anyone working in the fields of postdramatic performance and spectatorship, or collaborative performance-making.”
Kim Baston, Australian Drama Studies Journal.
"A book for many people, at once accessible and erudite, intimate and esoteric, illuminatingly edited, illustrated and designed"
Keith Gallasch, RealTime Arts.
Back to Back Theatre has transformed contemporary theatre internationally with their unique theatricality and imagination. The company is driven by an ensemble of actors perceived to have intellectual disabilities. Back to Back’s theatre is multi-layered, visual, expressive and sensory. The brilliance of their multi-award winning work is matched by its human scale and its respect for others. Hence, their awesome, confronting theatricality is also prosaic. As the company says, ‘We’re people who do shows.’ This book gathers key perspectives on Back to Back Theatre including interviews, documentation and scripts here made available to the reader for the first time. Accompanying this are essays and artistic reflections on some of the company’s most influential shows, including Soft, small metal objects, Food Court and Ganesh Versus the Third Reich.