Accessibility in Contemporary Theatre: Concepts, Challenges and Artistic Implications
Accessibility in Contemporary Theatre: Concepts, Challenges and Artistic Implications

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary theatre is increasingly required to address the participation of audiences and artists with disabilities, a demand that is at once ethical, legal and aesthetic. Drawing on doctoral research devoted to the accessibility of theatre performances worldwide, with particular attention to the Romanian case, this article examines accessibility in the theatre along the three axes announced in its title. It first clarifies the central concepts and the competing models of disability that frame the field; it then identifies the principal barriers that continue to constrain access; and it finally argues that accessibility, far from being a merely technical accommodation added to a finished performance, has become a generative artistic problem that reshapes dramaturgy, the actor-spectator relationship and the very language of the stage. The Romanian context is discussed as a case in which intention and legislation still outpace systematic implementation.

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