![\"Aaron](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Aaron-Pang-in-Falling-A-Disabled-Love-Story.jpg\" "\\"Aaron")
Aaron Pang in Falling A Disabled Love Story, \u00a9 Kaelan Novak<\/p>\n Aaron Pang in Falling A Disabled Love Story, \u00a9 Kaelan Novak<\/p>\n
When people talk about the perfect \u201crug pull\u201d in theatre, they\u2019re usually thinking of some big twist \u2014 the kind that shocks the audience and flips the story on its head.<\/p>\n
My show does have that, but for me, the most interesting twists are quieter. In Falling: A Disabled Love Story, I\u2019m not trying to trick the audience or guide them toward any particular ending. In fact, they always pick the ending I personally don\u2019t want them to.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s exactly the point.<\/p>\n
This show is about a spinal cord injury and everything that comes after. Dating, desire, awkward hookups, and trying to rebuild a sense of self in a world that already thinks it knows your story. The twist doesn\u2019t come from what I do. It comes from what the audience expects. I give them the \u201cinspirational\u201d story that I know they want.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve all been fed so many \u201cinspirational\u201d disability narratives \u2014 neat arcs, tidy lessons, feel-good endings \u2014 that people come in already primed for resolution. They\u2019re not wrong-footed by the story itself. They\u2019re wrong-footed by their assumptions.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t need to do a lot of work in my storytelling; I just need to lean into those warm, fuzzy feelings that people want.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a moment late in the show where I let the audience choose between two possible endings: A happy ending and a sad ending. Every single time, they overwhelmingly pick the version I don\u2019t like. But when they do that, it shows how skewed our preferences as a collective audience are. Which proves the thesis of the show. Their choice reveals more about the kind of story they\u2019re hoping for than the one I actually tell and live.<\/p>\n
The real shock isn\u2019t in what happens to me. It\u2019s in the moment they realise the story wasn\u2019t built to deliver a moral or a clean takeaway.<\/p>\n
The real rug pull isn\u2019t about me at all. It\u2019s about them.<\/p>\n
Realising the story isn\u2019t about the fall, or the recovery, or a moral. It\u2019s about how stories are deeply informed by the audience\u2019s wants and desires. I don\u2019t need to shock the audience. The expectations already built into how we talk about disability do that for me.<\/p>\n
The twist not only happens onstage, but the discomfort and shock linger delightfully long after the lights go down.<\/p>\n
Falling: A Disabled Love Story plays at Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two) from Wednesday 30 July to Monday 25th August 2025 (not 6th, 14th) at 15:00.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Pang in Falling A Disabled Love Story, \u00a9 Kaelan Novak When people talk about the perfect \u201crug…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-348738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115037605982846716","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}