Hello, my name’s Coery and I’m a performer. Some of you might have seen me as the Guardian of the Labyrinth recently in ‘The Reason I Jump’ which was a show by the National Theatre of Scotland. This show was based on a book by a Japanese author Naoki Higashida, who is non-verbal and on the autistic spectrum. (I read the book with my mum, it’s good, especially for learning about autism, I’d recommend it). For me, I am 13 and I am on the autistic spectrum. I was diagnosed with autism surprisingly at the age of 2. I speak at home with my family, but in public I communicate through an ipad.

My case of autism is not as extreme as people who have profound autism, who are the target audience for Playful Tiger.

In the last couple of weeks, Ellie and I have been to Perth Theatre, The Barn, Macrobert Arts Centre, Platform, The Byre Theatre and Eden Court Theatre, and Johnston Town Hall that’s ran by Paisley Arts Centre. I have been grounding everything because why not and to make sure people understand the types of objects that a profoundly autistic person hates. We have travelled Scotland to a lot of miles like 76 miles. It’s pretty long if you ask me. But at least I got to go to the Highlands.

Our journey has been great, we get to go to Tesco’s then I can get the registered trademarks and look at copyrights and trademarks. Yay yay, and We had a lot of breaks and we have been doing this for about 10 days. It’s been a tough, tough ride to get to all theatres but we done it either way. We made them watch a video called A Is for autism and It is a cool video aaaaaaaa ooooooooo. We did a sensory audit for them to check each venue and then we finished with a Carlton dance because why not and it’s funny!

The audit was important because Autism Is a target of bullying because some people bully autistic people because they’re different. For example, I’m sensitive to loud noises and flashing lights, so sometimes I wear ear defenders. I have a huge phobia of flying beasties, it’s the buzzing sound I hate. But it’s different for everyone. This might be a little weird but when I look at someone that has autism and was doing something weird, even I would think in my head, “what is he doing?” But after a minute I understand why.

The reason that we are doing the training is that we think that everyone should be able to go to the theatres to see a show. So we train the theatres of all the possibilities, an autistic person and profoundly autistic person has and people with other disabilities.

By Coery Nicholson

Playful Tiger is touring Scotland this autumn along with Tiger Tale and Tiger visiting:

Tour details

Platform, Glasgow
21st September- Playful Tiger, 1.30pm | Tiger, 7pm
22nd September- Tiger Tale, 11am
0141 276  9696 (opt 1)
Tickets

Eden Court, Inverness
24th September- Playful Tiger, 11am
01463 234 234
Tickets

The Byre Theatre, St Andrews
27th September- Playful Tiger, 11.30am | Tiger Tale,7pm
01334 475 000
Tickets

Johnstone Town Hall, Johnstone
30th September- Tiger, 7pm
1st October- Playful Tiger, 11am
0300 300 1210
Tickets

Perth Theatre, Perth
2nd October- Tiger Tale, 7pm
3rd October- Playful Tiger, 6pm
01738 621 031
Tickets

The Barn, Banchory
6th October- Tiger, 8pm
7th October- Playful Tiger, 11am | Tiger Tale, 2.30pm
01330 825 431
Tickets

Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling
12th October- Playful Tiger, 10.30am & 1.30pm
13th October- Tiger Tale, 2pm | Tiger, 7.30pm
01786 466 666
Tickets