‘Pleasure’ Takes Unflinching Look at Disability, ‘Token’ Feel-Good Politics

When It’s a Motherfking Pleasure begins, writers-performers Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani, and Chloe Palmer introduce themselves with visual descriptions. Brewer and Mehrabani inform us they are visually impaired while Palmer is able-bodied. Then we are oriented to the physical set: a bright yellow carpet outlined by caution tape, two armchairs on stage right flanking a coffee table, a standing mic on stage left. A large screen hangs above the set for live captions. (The screen reads “this is a safe space” before the performance begins.) From there, our hosts explain ableism while addressing a laundry list of access needs: Brewer and Mehrabani dim the lights to accommodate their egos, then raise them slightly for low-vision folks in row D; an audience member has hearing difficulties so Brewer runs closer to the front and yells his lines. With each new access need, the set recalibrates with no clear priority and the unseen live captioner desperately tries to keep up before turning to the audience for some commiseration.

The message is clear: Our current disability politics centering compartmentalized identities and individual comfort is as ridiculous and anxious as it is impossible and missing the forest for the trees. And yet, here we are, in a world where identity is currency and social media influencers unabashedly cash in on identity politics. Like all good satire, the show is a provocation that holds up a social mirror, asking: What if disabled people were out to make as much money as possible from the guilt of non-disabled, anxious people (like you)?

The second act takes us through a spiraling series of scenes playing out this exact question. A blind marketing executive (Brewer) convinces a blind man (Mehrabani) to become a disability influencer, launching a highly lucrative internet career and book deal. Palmer plays the corporation’s apologetic HR executive who tries to be a good ally, steering the team through a PR nightmare after Mehrabani makes a racial faux-pas on live TV. At this point, Mehrabani is ready to give it all up but a ruthless Brewer coaches him onward with a message once again appealing to identity politics: “We can’t all be Black, but we can all be Disabled.” And so the players continue the capitalist game of selling disability for public consumption.

In the third act Brewer, Mehrabani, and Palmer step outside their characters to display real videos of ableist “solutions” capitalizing on disability identity politics from TikTok. “Do you know how demoralizing it is to be out-satirized by real-life?” they ask and say they rewrote their story to outpace the darkness of reality. And dark they go, revealing a gruesome twist that finally cracks influencer Mehrabani. Brewer’s character is not phased and encourages him to keep making money, caught up in his own rage and righteousness within his disabled and individual experiences.

Here lies the heart of the play: In a society that disadvantages disabled people physically, economically, and politically while simultaneously capitalizing on marginalized identity politics and “woke” representation, what is disability justice? Is it morally wrong for disabled people to cash in on able-bodied guilt and to not only pay for life’s necessities but enjoy an excess of wealth and power like capitalism’s other winners—“an eye for an eye”, so to speak? Is it morally right to “become disabled” out of solidarity with disabled people—and if the whole world were blind, is that justice?

This is the horrifying social logic when disability justice centers individual comfort, guilt, and vengeance. The play suggests an alternative: Justice must also engage the social fabric connecting us and them. We must not miss the actual structures that make our society disabling, unequal, and self-righteous.

Our hosts then brilliantly take a meta-turn to mock the tokenism of their funders and critics, before turning to us who have paid to see their show. Naturally we’re given pre-printed five star reviews and glowing tweets, as well as “I’m An Ally” temporary tattoos we’re encouraged to wear proudly. The gesture is a parting provocation: Will you keep playing into the spectacle of wokeness?

With deft and hilarious satire, It’s a Motherfking Pleasure turns disability identity politics on its head and shows us the greater social questions we’re missing because of it. This show was the first production of disability-led and UK-based theater group Flawbored, and played at ArtsEmerson in Boston in early April.

For more information: https://artsemerson.org/events/its-a-motherfing-pleasure/