Jody O’Neill's highly researched and devised play manages to be both informative and entertaining while striking a difficult balance between tragedy and optimism.
This script and production were created at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, for the Rough Magic company, featuring a cast of six actors including the writer, who play a myriad of characters and roles exploring and expressing what it's like to be autistic.
The play recommends using a mixed cast of autistic and non-autistic actors and is a moving piece of TIE (theatre in education), using Brechtian techniques to make its points. Opening the piece is the stark statistic that only 16 per cent of autistic adults are in employment due to their failure to make eye contact.
What I (Don't) Know About Autism combines factual narration scenes with a group of six characters, all unique in their autism, who explain the way they perceive the world. Autistic behaviours like OCD rituals, sensory overload and stimming are explored vividly, sometimes with humour. Colm and Sandra are about to go on a date and sing a version of Don't Stop Believing entitled Don't Stim This Evening, which is a joy. One neat dramatic device is that one voice role has an interrupting voice played by the same actor that shows the character's true emotional state which can't be articulated.
The play includes 26 different episodes and is meant to be a relaxed performance, with no blackouts or applause at the end. There are also opportunities for questions from the audience. It becomes more serious in the second half as we find out what has happened to Casper. There is some shocking content around bleach treatments and ECT once used to ‘cure’ autism before being rejected in favour of tolerance and neurodiversity. One scene is called ‘the Science-y bit’, which is a song explaining the genetic basis of autism, leading us towards the end of the play where an adult finds comfort and community from her diagnosis.
O’Neill's play is ideal for use in schools and will be of interest to SENCOs and Psychology teachers as well. It deserves to be widely studied and performed because it is genuinely informative, non-sensationalist and heartfelt in its plea for neurodiversity and the recognition that every autistic person is unique.