Review: IT'S A MOTHERF**KING PLEASURE, VAULT Festival

"Aren't you tired of your own privilege?"

It's A Motherf**king Pleasure begins with an introduction to the actors - Sam, Chloe, and Aarian. Two of the actors, Sam and Aarian, are legally blind, and the three of them claim that they are trying to make the show "fully accessible" to both the actors and the audience.

Each actor gives a self-description; Chloe gives an audio description of the set, and the show is captioned on a screen behind the actors. But even from the beginning, you can tell that you are in for a hilarious night of satire and commentary as the actors' attempts to be more inclusive grow more extreme. They call out non-disabled audience members and have them do things to have the same access as those who are disabled. At one point Aarian himself is passed around in a "touch tour".

After the introduction, the true "story" of the show begins, telling the story of a blind talent manager, Tim. Tim "tries to make disability the next cultural cachet in a satire of the monetisation of identity politics". He has his company, Rize, hire an influencer, Ross, who insists that he does not want any part in activism even though he is blind. As the play within the play continues it gets wilder and wilder, leading to Rize's marketing statement that leads to chaos - "We can all be disabled". The struggles of Rize and its attempts to remain at the top of culture failed to grab my interest until the end, and even then, it was in a wild twist that made me uncomfortable, curling my hands into fists to keep from reacting.

Even though there was a content warning on the site for "graphic spoken descriptions of injury," I had failed to realise just how graphic the description was going to be (even now, as I write this article, I found myself curling up thinking about the scene). But, the purpose of the scene is to make the audience uncomfortable, to take them away from that sense of comfort they might have had in the comedic sections.

The best parts of the show are when the story the actors are telling, of Rize and its ableism, is paused and the actors become themselves. Each time the story is "paused" there is a really interesting lighting and sound effects that truly made me feel like I was being snapped out of a daydream.

At several points, John the captioner takes control of the show, giving himself a "voice" by having an audience member read out what he is typing about his hopes and dreams. There is a hilarious bit about the Arts Council England and how groups are funded for projects which pokes fun at the arm's length body while also commenting on how disabled artists are viewed by the world. Another highlight is the "Integrated, creative, audio description" of each character, which, to quote the actors, is basically an audio description of the "vibe" of a person.

It's A Motherf**king Pleasure is a brilliant commentary on disabilities and the arts. As one of the actors comments, "They didn't know it was good, but they knew it was disabled." Indeed, we should all be taking a look at ourselves and how we look at disability within not only the art world but society as a whole. How do we make things accessible?

FlawBored may not have the perfect answer, but they certainly do have a hilarious show on their hands.

It's A Motherf**king Pleasure runs at the VAULT Festival from 21 to 26 February at the Cage in The Vaults with performances at either 9:25 PM or 8:55 PM.

Photo Credit: VAULT Festival

VAULT Festival has been left without a venue for next year. You can contribute to the #SaveVAULT campaign here.

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