Last spring, Mind the Gap set out to tackle the stigma people with learning disabilities face when becoming parents. Their enormous outdoor production at Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park in south London featured more than 100 performers, tanks and a puppet of a baby bigger than a double-decker bus. Now, as the baby turns one, they’ve made the show available online.
Soon-to-be-mum Zara (JoAnne Haines) has learning disabilities and the authorities don’t think she’s capable of being a parent. Framed as a breaking news bulletin on the day of the birth, the drama is led by energetic presenter Sam Hill. With Haines elevated on a crane, negotiations with social services go awry and the night descends into a literal war zone: the army is deployed. Joyce Nga Yu Lee directs a fantastic spectacle with cannon-streamer baby poo and sirened cars wheeling about.
Next to Zara is the heart of both show and conflict: the big-bellied baby. She’s a beautiful bit of puppetry with enormous swinging arms and inquisitive eyes. Some of the puppeteers attach a ladder to her chest in order to pop a dummy in her mouth, while others control her pudgy hand to indignantly pluck it out.
The question swirling is how best to serve the baby’s needs, but all the production’s possible answers seem over-simplified. The enormity of the display doesn’t give much opportunity for subtlety. Instead, the focus is on making the audience consider how it feels to be on the receiving end of mass lack of expectation and constant intervention.
Some of the production values don’t have the same impact through the screen – particularly the 3D projection mapping – but the multi-camera recording is otherwise adept at giving a vibrant sense of the experience. Zara successfully challenges assumptions, and boldly and creatively gives a voice to parents with learning disabilities.
Available on YouTube until 11 May.
