A row has broken out over the use of a puppet to portray an autistic boy in a new play with critics saying it “dehumanises” those with the condition.
The National Autistic Society is among those to criticise the use of the puppet, saying it cannot “support” the show.
All In A Row, which stars former East-Enders actress Charlie Brooks as the mother of a severely autistic son, is set to open later this month at Southwark Playhouse. It is written by Alex Oates, who was inspired by his own time working as a carer. A puppet portrays the character of Laurence, who is described as “autistic, non-verbal and occasionally violent”.
Jane Harris, director of external affairs at the National Autistic Society, said: “About 700,000 people in the UK are autistic and most feel very misunderstood by the public. That’s why we give advice to production companies about ideas and scripts for TV, film and theatre to help them promote accurate images of autistic people.
“The production company behind this play contacted us and we arranged for autistic and non-autistic people to give feedback. We are pleased the production company made two changes in response — one for accuracy and another around representation.
“However, while recognising some of the play’s strengths, we decided we could not support the play overall due to its portrayal of autism, particularly the use of a puppet to depict the autistic character alone.”
Another critic, disability researcher Gill Loomes, said casting all the characters as puppets could have “sparked some important discussion” but instead they had “literally dehumanised the identity you sought to represent”.
The play has faced a backlash online since a production video previewing it was released. The mother of an autistic four-year-old girl wrote online that it was a portrait of “autism shown from the perspective of those around it, not the actual individual who is experiencing it”. Londoner Bobbi Elman, who is the parent of an autistic teenager, tweeted that the play fed into “a negative narrative of dehumanising”.
A spokesman for the play said it was “untenable” to get autistic performers to play the part. “We don’t think we could get informed consent from a non-verbal autistic actor aged 11 to play the role and additionally due to the law around employing children we’d need to actually have a minimum of three child actors for the role, as well as specialist, trained and licensed chaperones present at each performance.”
The spokesman added that they had consulted about 50 people with autism and the parents of autistic children while developing the play.
