In December 2024, we were fortunate to receive Arts Council England funding to develop The Philosophy of Cavemen, a new comedy play by Alex Acuff about morality & purpose. 

In this post R&D dispatch, director Laura Clifford reflects on sharing ideas and stories through accessible theatre practice.

Alex’s writing brilliantly oscillates between the profound and absurd, employing slapstick and satire alongside philosophical musings. The key idea for the play was to subvert the typical expectation of cavemen as being simple minded by having the characters discuss philosophy. As the content and story felt widely appealing, we were keen in the execution to subvert the expectation of a “philosophy” show by making it broadly accessible to audiences. 

I’ve worked with people with learning disabilities for the past six years and it felt right to incorporate this into my theatre practice for the first time. “Philosophy” has become such an intellectualised word but it really brings us back to very basic questions of why we are here and what gives life meaning - which we all have. Alex and I were keen to run with the idea of bringing the opportunity for discussion philosophy or “Big Ideas” to groups who don’t typically have the space or encouragement to do so. With the support of ACE funding, we were fortunate to have the resources to engage with learning disabled groups as future audiences, performers and consultants on play. We also had guidance from the brilliant Access All Areas (an organisation that creates and promotes performance work by learning disabled and autistic artists).

One of the first points of action was to engage artist Savannah Storm to create illustrations of the play, which were used as a word-free easy read resource for discussion and drama activities. Savanna has extensive experience in creating educational and access illustrations and was a brilliant collaborator to have. The results speak for themselves and it was fantastic to see the play realised through illustrations (dramaturgically, it was also a useful exercise in distilling the play into six key images). During the development of these, we spent half a day working with three Access All Areas Associate Artists as consultants to gain feedback on the illustrations, which were then used to make adjustments. 

The Access All Areas Associate Artists also offered consultation on ways of making theatre accessible to learning disabled audiences. This generated ideas on how elements such as movement, sensory stimulation and immersive design could improve the experience of the show for audiences with learning disabilities and neurodiversities. The artists also provided insight on the general standard for accessible shows, as well as touching on particular needs of different individuals with specific (and sometimes conflicting) needs - for instance, someone who likes the freedom to make sounds during a show can be at odds with another person who finds this over-stimulating and distracting. We came away with the reassurance that it’s impossible to make a “perfect” accessible show, although the existing standards successfully remove huge barriers for people with access requirements to enjoy theatre. 

This was reiterated during our consultation session with Helen Bryer (Take Part and Train Coordinator at Access All Areas) who helped us to build an inclusive and accessible workshop around the play. We headlined the session with the acknowledgement that we all communicate in different ways and by letting participants know to participate in whatever way worked best for their body and brain. 

The workshop took place at Stanley Arts with a group of 15 participants with learning disabilities and their support workers. We had people with a range of abilities, some more interested in discussing the easy-read illustrations and expressing thoughts around “Big Ideas”, while others came into their own during the physical drama activities. It was fantastic to have the space and time to reflect on the themes of the play and brilliant to discover how philosophical questions or “Big Ideas” can be a great springboard for improvisation - as there is often no “right” answer to these questions it was easy to bring conflict to their scenes (with the key instruction that none of the characters are allowed to agree with each other). On reflection, it was incredibly rewarding and also very rare to sit in a space where everyone is listened to and encouraged to express differing ideas without judgement. As we continue to think about the future of the show and its wider engagement, we hope to be able to do more of these workshops and promote the idea of philosophy for everyone!

Listen below to writer Alex Acuff and director Laura Clifford discuss The Philosophy of Cavemen and their experience during the R&D of bringing theatre and philosophy to new audiences.