Unspeakable Conversations

Mat Fraser and Liz Carr in Unspeakable Conversations. Image by Peter Searle

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Consider this your trigger warning. I’m about to play devil’s advocate. I’m about to claim that as a celebration of disability that challenges prejudice and preconceptions, Unspeakable Conversations is an absolute triumph. As a play purporting to interrogate whether a parent should be allowed kill, murder, terminate, chose your own, a disabled child within the first months of their lives, as proposed by Animal Rights Activist, Professor Peter Singer, it’s an infuriating failure. Singing to the converted who applaud, teary eyed, as it sidesteps the very question it raises. Leaving others feeling hoodwinked. Like many parents of disabled children upon whom the choice is being proposed. Who, like women in the abortion debate, find their voices silenced in the same way the Not Dead Yet campaign hoped to silence Singer after his appointment to Princeton. The end result some joyous, feel good fiddling while Rome looks about ready to burn. Steady. It’s about to get worse.

Theatrically, Unspeakable Conversations is divinely simple. Disabled actor Mat Fraser, alternating between playing himself and Peter Singer, introduces disabled actor Liz Carr, who alternates between playing herself and Harriett McBryde Johnson. An activist and attorney who fought for disabled rights during her lifetime. Through clever visuals and snappy dialogue by Christian O’Reilly, in collaboration with Carr, Fraser and Olwen Fouéré, name dropping, award envy, and anecdotal back stories provide context. Most notably around the encounter between Singer and Johnson immortalised in Johnson’s 2003 New York Times Magazine article, Unspeakable Conversations, recounting their debate at Princeton. In between there’s dancing, conversations on disabled actors playing able bodied people, recollections of first sexual encounters, and an Olivier Award Carr is determined Fraser is never going to hear the end of. All quaintly directed by Fouéré and Kellie Hughes. Charming, poignant, playful, hilarious and hugely insightful, Carr and Fraser prove irresistibly entertaining offering celebration as protest. But that's not what was proposed on the tin. It was supposed to address killing disabled babies, remember?

Take one glaring omission; the voice of the parent of a disabled child faced with the choice. Not just the parents of OIivier award winning, successful, poster children for the disabled, but the teen mother whose child is housed in a Saint John of God unit. Or a single mother who can’t manage emotionally, financially or personally with a child suffering a severe disability. Who likely couldn’t get an abortion. Whose life is now dedicated to caring for said child whatever her personal dreams might have been. Who may not want to be burdened with the responsibility, even with supports. Who might feel their own potential is equally valuable. Shouldn’t she have the same right to live her life? The same right as someone seeking an abortion? Is it not a question of a difference without a distinction? The assumption that every life is precious because you can’t predict what that life might potentially become being the same argument used by the Pro-Life lobby for the unborn foetus? If you can terminate one, why not both? If not one then surely neither? 'But it’s not about the parent,' you say, 'no one, disabled or otherwise, should have to justify their right to exist.' Most parents of disabled children might agree. We simply don’t know because they’re never heard, even though it is they who are faced with the choice and responsibility. Talk of assisted suicide for the disabled offering a neat segue into further avoidance. For assisted suicide presupposes choice and agency. Termination by a parent within the first months does not. Also, what constitutes disability? Aspergers? Autism? Why not terminate any child in its first few months if it’s a question of burdening the mother? Such are the questions lurking under the bed. Questions that haunt Unspeakable Conversations yet are left unspoken.

Why is this a problem? For those with disabilities. Refuse to ask the hard questions, to listen to the challenging voices, and you’ll only ever hear what you wanted to hear in the first place. Making it impossible to really address concerns, really challenge prejudice, or really effect change. Leaving the danger to mount. Another two notable, scary and glaring omissions. Firstly, before the Nazis unleashed the horror of the Holocaust, there was the T-4 Euthanasia Program which saw an estimated 70,000 people with disabilities murdered in Germany and Austria from 1939 to 1941. Even when officially ended in 1941, it continued secretly, killing an estimated 200,000 by 1945. The question proposed is not rhetorical or concerning some hypothetical nightmare; disabled terminations have historical precedent. But it couldn’t happen today, right? Glaring omission number two. America looks about to re-elect as President a criminal unashamed of mocking the disabled. As in 1939, the monster is only as powerful as those who refused to believe it exists. Making Johnson’s final gesture not one of hope but of childlike naivety. ‘I have to believe,' a clamping of hands over her ears and singing la la la to pretend the monster isn’t there. Carr and Fraser standing proud and defiant. ‘Not Dead Yet’ rising as an outraged chant, growing louder and louder. Meanwhile the monster under the bed bides its time. “No. Not Yet. But soon maybe.” Unspeakable? True. But do you really think it couldn’t happen again today? One positive takeaway. Johnson might not have wanted, or felt she should have to talk with Singer, but she did. Both learnt as a result. A beginning towards change was initiated.

We need to have a proper conversation about the unspeakable.

Unspeakable Conversations by Christian O’Reilly, in collaboration with Liz Carr, Mat Fraser and Olwen Fouéré, presented by Once Off Productions and Galway International Arts Festival, runs at the Mick Lally Theatre until July 27.

For more information visit Galway International Arts Festival 2024