It was fabulous, wasn't it? The Lady Macbeth was particularly good I thought, and Patrick Stewart always thrills me in Shakespearian roles.

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I got a stronger impression than I have had before that Lady Macbeth was quite mad even before the whole thing started. And a real feeling of evil from Macbeth. Nightmarish.

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Hmm, I got more a sense that he was morally weak (though not necessarily evil) to begin with but after being spurred on by the witches and by her that he took the mantle of evilness on wholeheartedly.

But yes, she came across as fairly deranged from the very first appearance. But in a *fascinating* way.

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Yes, evil at the end, you are right he was just weak at the start.

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This sounds absolutely brilliant. I hope it's available for download somewhere.

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The location is great, this horrible underground bunker, and the witches are ghastly bad nurses with big injection needles.

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I think people with learning disability could be more free than most to relax and enjoy the play, because they aren't as oppressed by other people's expectations.

Hmm. What makes you say that?

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I may be wrong, and I think I am skirting close to making stupid generalisations about a diverse collection of individuals. I am trying to think hard about what I was trying to say.

I think people in the arts can be generous and welcoming to people with learning disabilities, and sometimes not so welcoming to other people. And I think some of the 'this is too good/ too hard for you' messaging comes in the written word, or in mainstream education, that a person with limited literacy might not be so exposed to.

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I don't think it is always inherently the art form (of whatever sort) that sends the 'too good/too hard' message. It is the structures, presentation and/or people around it. Of course I can think of a number of musical examples that are excluding, but tbh I feel the 'too good for you' message coming from quite a lot of popular cultural stuff. I feel a bit like being in high school when I try to engage with stuff like Big Brother - the message is 'you're too geeky/weird/boring'. Perhaps there's something to be said about the reciprocal nature of what happens when people enjoy or simply consume art; we bring stuff to it, inevitably.

The Macbeth is on the iPlayer - worth every bloody penny of the license fee!

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Yes, pop culture can be excluding, for instance showing arty people as wankers :-)

Oh, thank you for the information about Macbeth, I have posted that now.

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I think your instinct about overgeneralizing may have been the right one, though. :) I'd say, as you did allude to, that there are myriad types of learning disabilities, some of which may involve other cognitive issues and most if not all of which affect each individual slightly differently. I'd also suggest that people with disabilities, learning or otherwise, continually receive both textual and subtextual messages from all kinds of media and persons that they shouldn't attempt X thing because it would be too challenging or somehow just not enjoyable for them--challenging/not enjoyable according to what a non-disabled person assumes about their lived experience.

And then by the same token, assumptions are continually being made about the likes and dislikes of PWD in general. It feels akin to a white person saying something like, "Oh, people of color would enjoy/not enjoy that kind of movie." Or (because those race-ability analogies always make me feel a little squicky) a sighted person saying, "Blind people would likely not enjoy a baseball game/would enjoy a music concert." I think the only way to know if/how a person with a disability enjoys something is to ask him or her; beyond that, you'd need to do a more formal, community-wide survey, like you would to discover the likes or dislikes of any population.

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OK, well i take on board what you say

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I remember we took my father to a production of Gorky's The Lower Depths after he had Alzheimer's, and he seemed to enjoy that; it was very dramatic, with characters throwing each other to the floor, and he obviously responded to that, whether he grasped the plot or not.

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Yes, my nephew loves to see fighting on stage. H used to do mock-fighting with him. One time he introduced H to my grandma, delightedly saying 'He punches me!'

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Having caught up with Macbeth, I'm afraid my dominant thought is I want Lady Macbeth's hat!

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because they aren't as oppressed by other people's expectations.

There's a bit in Helen Garner's book Cosmo Cosmolino where a working-class guy is looking at a sculpture that one of his housemates has made, and it says... oh, I wish I had it here. It says something like 'the idea of himself LOOKING AT ART came down between him and the sculpture, so that he couldn't see it at all'. Which is certainly something that happens a lot with Shakespeare, I think.

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Yes. Absolutely that was what I meant, but blunderingly. I feel it strongly because it wasn't until I was in my forties that the idea of 'myself listening to classical music' lifted enough for me to actually hear it. Forty wasted years.

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Or Leonard Bast in Howards End. I always think that description of him after he visits the Schlegels after Helen walks off with his brolly is one of the most damning sets of words I know.

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I always remember the heart-wrenching performance by Timothy West

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Is that on the Merchant Ivory film? I've never seen that - didn't want to ruin one of my fave books!

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I think it is. I've seen it in something.

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I know learning disability is a very broad category, but I think you know what I am saying.

Yup.

I was sorry to miss Patrick Stewart as MacBeth. I'm hoping for a re-run at some point.

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Can you read it online at the link here? Not sure if it works out of the UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wnstq/Macbeth/

I have been thinking about how I phrased it before and I think I said it wrong. I guess a better framing would be that learning ability isn't an insuperable barrier to enjoying Shakespeare, because people at all levels do in fact enjoy the plays. I wish I'd said it like that first off.

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Thanks very much for the thoughtfully provided link, but BBC iPlayer doesn't work outside England/Scotland/Wales. (I think the pay version coming soon will, though.)

I knew what you meant! :D

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