Postcards from Oasis: Paradox and Inclusive Theatre in South Africa

Abstract

This article explores the paradoxes of disability inclusion in theatre through four case studies from The Oasis League, an applied inclusive theatre project at Oasis Association, a group home for adults with intellectual disabilities in Cape Town, South Africa. Situated within participatory arts research and applied theatre pedagogy, the project brought together University of Cape Town theatre and Oasis residents in six weeks of devising workshops culminating in public performances. Each “postcard” case study captures a snapshot of inclusive practice—superhero soundscapes, tea-time battles, recycling adventures, and the “best worst day”—illustrating both the possibilities and contradictions of inclusion. The postcards dramatize tensions between access and participation, independence and interdependence, visibility and invisibility, and highlight the ways relationships, reciprocity, and collaboration become engines of transformation. While inclusive theatre challenges systemic ableism, paradoxes remain: inclusion risks tokenism, simplification, or segregation, even as it seeks equity. These tensions, however, are not failures but generative forces that produce innovative strategies for access, artistry, and allyship. The article argues that inclusive theatre training must embrace paradox as method—equipping practitioners to adapt flexibly, center relationships, and build communities that are “perfectly imperfect, exclusively inclusive, and weirdly normal.”