Designing a Confusion. Disabled Theater by Jérôme Bel

The paper aims at analyzing the structure of the performance and the mechanisms that are designed to confuse the audience of Disabled Theater staged by Theater HORA and Jérôme Bel, which usually meets with extreme opinions of theatergoers. The author argues that the choreographer deliberately assumed that the spectators will treat the performers in a different way than they usually do because of the disabilities the latter have. In his opinion, although Bel is frequently accused of doing so, the director had not exploited the actors, but created a powerful performance that no one can remain indifferent to, and that forces to rethink not only one’s attitude towards people with disabilities, but also the questions of aesthetic judgements in general, and the question of virtuosity in particular.