Happy New Year! I hope you had a restful, enjoyable time over the Christmas break. I met up with family, spent time cosying up with books and magazines, and – importantly – gave myself a few days’ break from work. It’s left me feeling refreshed and excited about 2022.
And I’m really happy to have started this year with a feature published by the Guardian – which you can read here. The piece is on my experience of watching a play – A Chorus Line, at Curve theatre in Leicester – with audio description, and attending a pre-show talk for visually impaired people beforehand. For years, I’ve struggled with theatre as a partially sighted person. I find it hard to follow the action on stage, and find myself getting frustrated as I lose track of what’s happening. I’ve been curious about trying an accessible performance for a while, so this was a really interesting commission.
In the feature, I talk about the experience of the pre-show talk and audio description, and how it helped me truly enjoy theatre for the first time. I hope this article helps highlight to others that options like this are available, and also the importance of accessibility for disabled audiences. I’ve had a really lovely response to the feature from readers, which makes it all so worthwhile.
I’m hoping that this positive start to 2022 is a sign of how things will continue! I’m excited to be working on other commissions at the moment, as well as nervously waiting on news on some big projects (and trying not to obsessively check my emails hoping for updates…!). And, of course, I have plenty of PhD work, with lots to do as I write my memoir, as well as research around disability and life writing.
I’m feeling very fortunate to have so many lovely things to work on at the moment. I’m not a big winter person, so having lots of writing to focus on definitely helps me through the darker months of the year. I hope that 2022 is a good year for us all.
Caroline Butterwick 