Don’t let the big words in the title fool you. “Perceptual Archaeology”? I’m closer to knowing what that might mean after seeing Alex Bulmer’s new show at Crow’s Theatre, a co-production with Fire and Rescue Team that helps you to imagine How To Travel Blind, and perhaps rethink how you live if you were to “decentre visuality”. It’s a question that’s a luxury to contemplate if your eyes work. A blind person must ask such things of necessity.

I can’t deny that the title stopped me short, pausing to ask myself how that works, what does it mean. As a sighted person I’m amazed at how people manage to get around in their home or their city when they can’t see.

Now picture doing that in another country where they don’t even speak your language.

Notice that the verb I used (picture) is visual. I think I’m an average person, which is to say, I rely on what I see and tend to speak via metaphors and images that invoke eyesight.

Coming into this show I was ready to have my eyes opened (whoops there I go again with that visual-orientation). I know that lots of people have more courage than I do. What was so intriguing about this piece was the vulnerability of the presentation, a kind of story-telling that took us along on the journey around the world, the blind performer before us showing us a great deal about how it works without ever leaving the theatre.

The piece (forgive me if I skip the big title) was “several years in the making“, they tell us. That’s no surprise when we read about the author’s history from the program:

In 2014, the Winston Churchill Trust funded Alex Bulmer to pursue a Blind travel writing project inspired by the nineteenth century British Blind travel writer James Holman. She was later commissioned to turn her travel writing into five essays for BBC radio. These essays are the foundation of this play and led to the creation of a new Canadian theatre collective with Leah Cherniak and Laura Philipps called Fire and Rescue Team.

It’s very romantic the way Alex speaks of James Holman, a real adventurer from another century. But I fear it all sounds too dry, the way I’m speaking of this.

The cool stories Alex tells of James Holman (which I won’t tell as I believe in a spoiler free writeup) remind me that disability and ability are at least partly performative. Just as he was acting out a brave bold persona, so too Alex in her presentation. I am raising the issue of disability very carefully for fear of sending the wrong message.

Alex has reminded me of how much I miss travel. I was in NYC in January 2020 and since then haven’t been out of Ontario. We are socialized by encounters with others, whether we speak their language or not. This little travelogue is a genuine tour de force, sometimes warm and fuzzy, sometimes a nudge to remind us how fortunate we are.

The relatively bare stage is apt for a show inviting us to identify and perhaps wonder: “what might it be like?” We don’t need an actual bed or airplane to be taken on a trip with Alex and Enzo and James. Leah Cherniak directs this minimalist show. There’s not much there and that’s a good thing. I closed my eyes a few times, listening rather than staring, swept up in sensory images.

It was a trip.

PERCEPTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY (or How To Travel Blind) continues at Crow’s Studio Theatre until June 25th.