Breaking Myths about Autism through Performance-based practices. An Exploratory Analysis of the Imagining Autism Approach

Resumen

Since the Seventies, the encounter between drama/theater/performance and disability has attracted a growing interest from both the world of art and theatrical critics and from the sciences of education and pedagogy, engendering a fertile research field. In recent years, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have increasibily been the object and subject of these performative experimentations, riding the wave of popularity that this epidemiology is experiencing at the international level. After a preliminary review of the main approaches using participatory perfomance practices with persons with autism, this work focuses on one of these methods: Imagining Autism. Providing an overview of its history and implementation, the paper explores the use of performance-based activities and their characteristics as a venue for autism research which might contribute to de-mythologize this condition by challenging well-established stereotypes.