It’s a measure of the heightened profile of the Paralympic Games in London 2012 that Coldplay have agreed to play the closing ceremony. Chris Martin’s band will headline the event co-ordinated by Kim Gavin — the creator of Take That’s comeback tour, who also masterminded the Olympic closing ceremony.
Gavin will be working again with his key collaborators on that event: Es Devlin, the designer of Lady Gaga’s stage shows, and David Arnold, who composed the scores for the last five Bond films. Their Paralympic endpiece will bring to a close an exceptional summer where the extraordinary abilities of disabled and able-bodied performers have been celebrated alongside those of disabled and able-bodied athletes.
There is slightly less code-red secrecy surrounding the Paralympic opening and closing bashes than accompanied Danny Boyle’s triumphant christening of the stadium on July 27. But the overall producer of all four of London 2012’s theatrical extravaganzas, Stephen Daldry, understandably doesn’t want to give away any big surprises. What seems likely is that the opening and closing events — which have been given the respective titles of “Enlightenment” and “Festival of Flame” — will follow Boyle’s lead in restoring heart and a sense of human scale to the spectacle.
The opening show, for which some details have been given out, is in the hands of joint artistic directors Jenny Sealey and Bradley Hemmings. Sealey, who went deaf at the age of seven, has been artistic director of Britain’s leading disabled theatre company Graeae since 1997. Hemmings runs the annual Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, as well as producing and curating the Mayor of London’s annual disability arts festival, Liberty. The two have worked together many times before on large-scale outdoor shows using deaf and hearing, disabled and able-bodied performers.
A team of 50 people with disabilities, embracing established performers and newcomers including injured soldiers, have been trained in circus skills to take part in both Paraylympic ceremonies. The opening event involves a cast of 3,000 adult volunteers, 100 children and 100 professional performers. Some will be deaf: as Sealey and Hemmings know from experience — and as Boyle showed in his opening ceremony — sign language can be a useful accompaniment to speech in a big outdoor event.
The child volunteers have been recruited from schools in the London 2012 host boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. Several of those taking part in the opening ceremony attend Trinity School, a special school in Dagenham renowned for the quality of its performing arts.
