Last Train In - Uno Festival 2017

Adam Grant Warren, rice and beans theatre

May 24th, May 25th 7 pm

Hurray for Uno Festival's choice to include a show by and about a guy in a wheelchair!!  There's so much we take for granted in our healthy bodies, in this technology infused world.  Knowing someone who's differently abled, even for a brief time at a theatre performance, reminds us about that. 

Adam tells a tragic story, a story that shines light on the inadequacies and sometimes cruelty of our structured world, but he tells it with humour and even compassion for our able-bodied disabilities.

Adam reveals, for example, the somersaults our brains perform when we see someone in a wheelchair who looks like they need some help.  Some of us do the "I want to help, but I don't want to offend" dance.  Others, Adam shares, aren't so confusedly kind.

I work with people of various "abilities." One guy, in a wheelchair, loves to travel on buses and trains and ferries.  He jokes about going to Vancouver to visit with his dad ... gotta take the city bus though, don't take Wilson's, because it's not accessible.  And then he giggles.  But it's not funny, really.  My friend has a developmental (brain) challenge in addition to his physical one, but he totally gets that the world works better for fully "abled" people.  He often suggests we should launch a picket until we get the services we need.  I'm with him on that!!

Adam is not challenged cerebrally, he's a teacher.  His wheelchair is manual whereas my friend's is fully automatic.  But some of the challenges they share are common.  Even elderly people have some difficulty getting around our youth-oriented society!  Spend an hour of your day wondering how you'd get where you're going, or do what you're doing, with any kind of a physical or mental challenge.

After watching Adam manoeuver with tremendous skill during his hour and a half performance, I waited at a bus stop alongside a man in a similar chair.  My brain did the dance ... "should I talk to him about the play, or would that be presumptuous?"  

Now, my brain is challenged with the degree of honesty I want to share about this play.  Oh, what the heck, I think Adam would appreciate knowing how I feel.  I absolutely loved seeing him on stage, watching the reactions of others watching him on stage.  His story evoked emotions, and offered a lot to think about.  But I felt there was some redundancy in his story telling, and it dragged on a bit.  I'm also wondering why the climatic event, his finding success in that train station after midnight, wasn't portrayed closer to the end of the play. 

Thank you Adam, and also to rice and beans theatre company.  I hope we see a lot more performances by and about differently abled people!

p.s. I believe it was David Turner, while city Mayor, who helped implement the accessible buses so folks like Adam can get around.  And it was Christy Clark's government who, in the fall of 2016, took away their affordable annual bus passes.