How to Become a Professional Artist: Listening to the Life Stories of Artists with Disabilities

1. How to Become a Professional Artist: Listening to the Life Stories of Artists with Disabilities    Maud Verdier Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

2. Stories of Personal Experience • Stories of personal experience / first person narratives are intended to account for past events that have entered the narrator’s biography. • The relationships between a narrative and the underlying events experienced by the narrator are not entirely transparent. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

3. Actors/Actresses’ stories of PersonalExperience • Actors/Actresses with disabilities • They are used to tell their stories in different settings. • Their personal trajectories can be transformed into performance on stage. • Consequence: • To study the artifices, the modalities and the transformations, used by the narrator to manage to give an account of his/her experience. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

4. How didyoubecome an actor/actress? • Actors’ answers in the mundaneartisticfield • Coïncidence / Chance • Destiny • Psychologicalpredisposition • Tutelary figure The desire of acting is presented like a predisposition that needs a tutelary figure/object to find its full expression. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

5. How didyoubecome an actor/actress? • DisableActors’ answers • A natural disposition • The centrality of childhood • School as an event trigger The desire of acting is presented like a disposition that needs a specific arrangement/apperatus to find its full expression. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

6. Actress’ Testimony (Company La Bulle Bleue) “àl’écolej’ai fait de la danse et du mime ; et puisà la téléj’ai vu des enfants qui jouaientdans un film et j’aivoulu faire commeeux // j’aitoujoursétéattiré par tout ce qui étaitartistique / j’aitoujoursrêvé de pouvoir en faire un métier // àl’école , çafaisaitpartie de ma scolarité, ça me plaisait” / "At school I did dance and mime; and then on TV I saw children who were playing in a movie and I wanted to be like them // I was always attracted to everything that was artistic / I always dreamed of being able to do a job of acting // at school, it was part of my schooling, I liked it “ Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

7. Being an Artist • Vocation •  The specificity of the artistic profession • Je veuxseulementquevousm’aimiez, Jacques Allaire, • Cie La BulleBleue, 2017. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

8. Being an Artist • A difficult path Artists with disabilities often describe the processes and the (often highly complex) path they had to go through that explain where and who they are now. Why keep on going in the artistic field? • Lecture de Automne, Bruno Geslin, Cie La BulleBleue, 2018. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

9. Telling/Listening to Life Stories • Life stories: not only a direct testimony of professionalization, but also an element of the professionalization. • Being a professional artist involves the capacity for building a certain form of self, which includes a certain mode of self-presentation. • Lecture de Le Bouc, Bruno Geslin, Cie La BulleBleue, 2019. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery

10. Telling/Listening to Life Stories • To learn from the patterns that might emerge in the interviews. • To understand the specificity of the professionalization in the artistic sector, as much as the study of the personal narratives’ content does. • Le Bouc, Bruno Geslin, Cie La BulleBleue, 2019. Praxiling UMR 5267 - CNRS <> Université Paul Valery