A disabled theatre troupe makes the able-bodied the discriminated minority — and it isn't asking for your sympathy
Yaoyao flips the whole social order: after a nuclear war most people are augmented, and the few unmodified able-bodied are the "original sinners" who have to fight for their rights. This isn't a lament — it's a power fantasy written for disabled people.
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Disabled women being unable to leave the house is the norm
Yaoyao's earliest work was the documentary Han Ya (寒鸦), about three disabled women's struggles with family education and employment. One of the sisters had not left her home in 36 years; when her parents took her out to visit relatives at holidays, her feeling was that it was "like walking a little dog or cat." Later she got the first computer of her life, went online, and found a job as a telephone operator — no degree required, only a sweet voice. Once she had the job she bought herself a wheelchair and rolled out of the house. Another mother, who is visually impaired, was allowed to breastfeed her baby for only five minutes before her mother-in-law took the child away, on the grounds that "you can't see, you can't raise a child"; for years afterward she fought her husband's family for custody. These testimonies made Yaoyao realise that being unable to leave the house is not an isolated case.
— YaoyaoDisabled people's friends are all disabled people
A former colleague of Yaoyao's uses a wheelchair. When she moved, the only people she could ask for help were friends who also use wheelchairs, loading them up front and back and hauling load after load. Yaoyao instinctively asked why she didn't call able-bodied friends who can walk upright — they'd have finished in half a day. The woman paused, then said, I don't know any able-bodied people. She did not have a single able-bodied friend; even her friends all used wheelchairs. Yaoyao says she didn't know how to continue the conversation, and realised only one thing: if disabled and able-bodied people never even get the chance to meet, "you have no chance at integration to speak of." That was the direct starting point for her later search for a drama teacher and her work in integrated theatre.
— YaoyaoWriting the able-bodied as the discriminated original sinners
The Leyi troupe's first play, Reverse Future (逆转未来), does a straight identity reversal: a nuclear war turns most people disabled, and they become new humans through technological modification — electronic eyes, cochlear implants and the like. The remaining able-bodied minority, guilty of "the crime of starting the nuclear war," become original sinners, marginalised by society. Yaoyao's logic: since she herself is a situs inversus person, she might as well flip the whole society too, turning the rights disabled people now have to fight for into rights the able-bodied have to fight for. She calls it writing a power fantasy for disabled people. The plot's core: an original-sinner father, to spare his son from suffering for his able-bodied body, gets drunk, picks up a chainsaw and tries to cut off his son's legs — but ends up in a pool of blood himself, and the son is charged with killing his father. The courtroom scenes open up the debate about original sinners and augmented humans.
— YaoyaoHow the unseen and the unheard partner up
Visually impaired actor Wang Xiaomin was pulled in as a partner by deaf actor Li Ning during an audition. His first reaction was blank: you can't hear, I can't see, how are we supposed to act? Li Ning's solution was to put his hand on the back of Wang's hand and trace, tapping once when it was Wang's line. Director Ma Yan says blind and deaf performers sharing a stage already exists abroad: the deaf person's hand rests on the visually impaired person's hand, and the visually impaired person can feel the movements. Wang Xiaomin says deaf people had been around him since childhood, but back then he saw them as two kinds of people born with communication barriers, for whom "communication was absolutely impossible" — a barrier that was almost insurmountable. After this collaboration he and Li Ning became close friends. The troupe also had to solve sign-language interpretation, real-time captioning on a big screen, and assigning a volunteer to each visually impaired actor for audio description.
— Wang XiaominVisually impaired actors cheat on stage with earphones
Only later in rehearsals did the director discover that the visually impaired actors were in fact "cheating": they wore earphones, listened to the lines at several times normal speed, and delivered them live on stage without a hitch. The director had no way to assess this and could only wonder how the visually impaired actors got their lines down so fast. Conversely, the director doesn't know sign language, so he could only watch everyone signing while he laughed along — when in fact the actors might be complaining about him in sign. Once they got familiar, everyone knew each other's little tricks.
— YaoyaoShe received the best production award from the ICU
In 2024, Reverse Future was selected for the Nanjing New Theatre Festival initiated by Stan Lai. That year Yaoyao had heart problems and was admitted to the ICU; the troupe nearly fell apart, and it was a friend who stepped in to gather everyone for rehearsals and take them to Nanjing. At the closing buffet, while the other groups' tables sat empty — everyone dressed up waiting for the awards — Yaoyao's table finished their plates, went back for more, and thought, "how could it possibly be us." In the end they won Best Production, the festival's highest award, and jury chairman Stan Lai stood and led the applause. The news reached the ICU at the same moment as the award, and Yaoyao lay in her hospital bed in tears. That October the play was invited to the Wuzhen Theatre Festival as the first disability-integrated play, the only production in the "Nothing Is Impossible" section.
— YaoyaoAfter writing this play, she changed her answer and chose not to be born
The second play, I Choose to Be Born (我选择出生), is set in a world where every country legislates that when a fetus reaches eight months, parents must use brainwaves to inform it of its health status and family environment, and the fetus decides whether to be born. Among five families: deaf parents who must honestly tell their child you'll be deaf too; a husband who deceives his wife into having a child; a family that favours boys over girls; and a final story adapted from Yaoyao's own experience. The troupe's actors couldn't get through the script, because their life experiences were eerily similar — only the illness differed. Asked whether they would still choose to be born if they had it to do over, most of the troupe still said they would choose birth, because they still love this world. Yaoyao changed her answer: she used to say she would choose birth too, but now she might choose not to be born, because disabled people are forced to be born into this society, with no choice in the matter.
— YaoyaoThe same question, and Cai Cong gives the opposite answer
The episode sets the deaf couple in I Choose to Be Born against the real Cai Cong (蔡聪): Cai Cong and his wife are both visually impaired, and when his wife was pregnant many people urged them to get tests to see whether the child would inherit the visual impairment. But Cai Cong did not want to presume, merely because the child might also be visually impaired, that such a life was not worth starting; they believe they can give a child a loving family. The deaf couple in the play decide to let the child be born. Yaoyao and Cai Cong give very different answers, and the argument over this choice persists. The episode's question is: when a family makes a choice, how much capacity to choose do they actually have?
In their own words · checked verbatim
She was taken aback too, and said, I don't know any able-bodied people. She didn't have a single able-bodied friend — even she and her friends all used wheelchairs.
她当时也愣了一下 说我不认识健全的 她没有任何一个健全人朋友 甚至她和她的朋友都是坐轮椅的
Yaoyao11:19
I said, I'm a situs inversus person, so we might as well flip the whole society too and see what happens.
我说我是境面人 那我们不如直接把整个社会 也调转一下 看看会发生什么
Yaoyao14:19
This play makes you think. The sincerity of the performance covers the flaws in technique. And most striking of all is the troupe's refusal to be pitied.
这部剧引人深思 表演的真诚掩盖了专业的瑕疵 最震撼人心的 还有剧团拒绝同情的态度
None of us could get through it, because we felt our life experiences were all eerily similar — only the illness was different, but the experience was the same.
就大家都没有办法能够读下去 是因为觉得我们的生命经历 都异常的相似 只不过是病种不一样 但是经历都是一样
Yaoyao34:45
I actually used to say I would choose to be born, but if it were now, I might choose not to be born.
我其实之前我也说我会选择出声 但是如果是现在的话 我可能会选择不出声
Yaoyao35:45
But perhaps what's really worth asking is: when a family makes a choice, how much capacity to choose does she actually have?
但也许真正值得追问的 是当一个家庭做出选择的时候 她究竟拥有多少选择的条件
He was like a blade of grass in the wind, about to wither — but he was always growing.
他就像是一朵 风中的 即将枯萎的 一株草一样 但是他始终是生长
Wang Xiaomin38:47
Figures
| Yaoyao's age | 38 | 1:00 |
| Doctors' predictions for Yaoyao's lifespan | At age 1 they said she wouldn't live to 3; at 7 or 8 they said she wouldn't live to 12; at 12 they said she wouldn't live to 18 | 2:03 |
| How long the sister in Han Ya had not left home | 36 years | 7:15 |
| Beijing drifting disabled women interviewed for Beijing Disabled Women's Illustrated (北京残障女子图鉴) | 10 | 9:19 |
| Wang Xiaomin's age | 29 | 17:22 |
| How long Wang Xiaomin gets up early each day to tell idiom stories | Three hours total at 7, 8 and 9 o'clock, each voice message 60 seconds | 19:23 |
| The legally mandated time for communicating with the fetus in I Choose to Be Born | When the fetus reaches eight months | 32:39 |
Glossary
- Original sinner (原罪人)
- The setting of Reverse Future: able-bodied people who were not physically modified after the nuclear war, marginalised by society for the crime of war
- Situs inversus (镜面人)
- A congenital condition in which the internal organs are completely reversed from the normal position; Yaoyao has it
- Audio description (口述影像)
- A volunteer describes in real time, in the ear of a visually impaired person, the movements and images happening on stage
How to listen
People in nonprofits, theatre and community workshops; content people who want to understand why integration can't rest on goodwill alone; practitioners and volunteers working on disability issues.
The rehearsal clip at the start and the submission call-to-action at the end can be skipped.