Playwright Kath Duncan was born with only half her left arm and half her right leg. "The other limbs are sort of there but they're a bit wonky too - parts of me are wonky," she told AAP. In 1961, her disability meant low expectations and schooling in a special education institution from the age of three.
Built on the site of a former dump and fenced with barbed wire, Duncan describes the school as a place where children were given hours of dull activities and could be removed from the classroom for testing at any moment. "I hated every second - in my little kid head, it was a torture place," she said. After six years of desperation, she managed to transfer to a public school, which Duncan said was like breaking out of jail.
But her shame and anger at her time in special education lasted decades, and in 2000 she began developing a dark comedy titled Specials! about revenge on the system. The play, which is Duncan's first full-length work, might just be an Australian first. "We think this is the first time a person who actually went to special school has written a play that went anywhere - let alone a play about special education," she said.
It's being developed through a Warehouse Residency at Arts House Melbourne, with a cast of five disabled performers and a mostly disabled crew. In September 2023, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability delivered 222 recommendations - but after more than four years of looking into disabi.