“Why are they doing cabaret in the dark?”: blindness and simulation in Extant Theatre’s <i>Effing and Blinding! Cabaret</i>

This essay explores Extant Theatre’s production Effing and Blinding! Cabaret (EBC) in conversation with discourse about disability simulations and immersive performance. Extant Theatre is a blind-led theatre company based in England. From 2007–2009, Extant produced and toured EBC, a variety performance staged entirely in the dark. The essay places EBC in conversation with scholarship about immersive theatre simulations and disability simulations. It argues that EBC’s use of darkness challenges normative ways of thinking about darkness in theatre design, which artists frequently deploy as a means to instil fear, suspense, or disorientation in their audiences. Instead, EBC uses darkness to call attention to and parody the problematic tendency of many immersive theatre artists to attempt overly simplistic simulations of marginalized identities and experiences.