CACA Courage: Victory, Empathy and CriticismThe passing shadows of the Olympics are brightened by our memories of triumph. In our lounge rooms we lived the struggles of competition with our athletes, marvelled at the stories of conquest and shared the bitter disappointments of those who heroically failed to bring home the gold. And it isn't about to stop. As I write this, the headline of today's papers declares 'Paralympian turns tragedy into triumph'1. It seems we are all being readied for another cocktail of triumphant victory, this time with a twist of disability. Thank goodness then for CACA Courage which challenges and undermines these overly sentimental and idealised victory stories. The Brisbane Energex Festival is presenting Access Arts and The Queensland Performing Arts Trust's production of CACA Courage, a much needed art antidote to the "triumph in the face of dreadful adversity' cliches and the "But they're so Brave!' homilies which rain down on people experiencing disabilities. The show refuses to let the audience draw comfort from these often patronising narratives and makes quite unsettling demands of them. It does this firstly through its subject matter. As we follow these characters with the disabilities hurdle life's rites of passage about sex, relationships and death, we are never given the opportunity to be reassured by accounts of valour and victory. In this work "courage' isn't pure, it's a stuttering thing, its CACA courage! Once we are denied the "truth of the triumph', this show becomes tremendously unsettling. Without a victory story we are robbed of the familiar lens through which we can safely read such a work. And of course it's the sight/site of the performer's bodies that leaves us disturbed. In this show these are never " disability bodies on display' ,a display which permits the audience to be shocked, embarrassed and intrigued and then calmed by stories of individual heroics. No. These performers proudly turn their disabilities into abilities, their twisted bodies into gnarled dances and their stammering voiced into eloquent song-scapes. Onto their "abilities' they then overlay the French Bouffon tradition of the subversive clown to create further dissonance and consternation. In embodying the show as they have. Russell Dykstra and his cast share a major preoccupation with artists working in contemporary performance. These artists manipulate the body to reject theatrical illusion but at the same time draw attention tot the body and make it conspicicous. Often this is done by showing the body in fragments, by drawing attention to the embarrassing fluids and wastes it expels (also suggested by the title ,all little children can tell you that poo poo is ca ca!) and by exposing the body as a place of abuse, violence and transgression ,by showing bodies a wicked yet wonderful things. At the Adelaide Festival earlier this year the Italian Company Societas Raffaello Sanzio presented the extraordinary Guilio Cesare which featured one of the most astounding collections of bodies ever gathered on a single stage. Old and frail bodies, fat bodies, dying bodies, inner bodies and imaginary bodies all passes by. In a confronting and controversial move, the director Romeo Castellucci cast two frail and anorexic women as Cassuis and Brutus in order to explore how 'the theatrical make-believe coincides with the actors bodily truths'2. CACA Courage is located at the centre of this approach which deliberately employs actor's bodily truths to resonate with and heighten the make believe world of the performance. What is so powerful about CACA Courage is that it refuses to ask for the audience's sympathy or even their empathy. For when we feel sympathy and empathy with these performers we are only too willing to 'make allowances' and hastily turn to those triumphant, victory narratives for reassurance and understanding. In doing this we become a disabled audience. Disabled in that we can seldom see beyond surface appearances, become unsure of how to respond (is it OK to laugh?) and desperate to alight on a single meaning o explain away what we are seeing. This challenges all audiences but especially the "professional spectators' ,the theatre critics who are expected by many to understand the "true meaning' of each and every theatrical piece. However critics are bound by the conventions of their trade and by powerful assumptions about taste, class, race, gender, sexuality and disability. These factors all inevitably come to bear in validating and naturalising their readings as reliable and trustworthy. But when the single and compelling "true meaning' of a victory narrative cannot be used, then what's a critic to do, left like all of us, in a sea of open ended interpretation. Brad Haseman Academy of the Arts QUT 8 October, 2000 1 Paul Malone, The Courier Mail, Friday October 6, 2000, p.1. 2 Romeo Castellucci in Program Guilio Cesare (Adelaide, March 2000, p.5.) 
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