Encounter between 'I' and 'You' is a central feature of autobiographical performance as the performer attempts to communicate an intimate sense of what it means to be a particular self to a second-person assemblage of curious witnesses. Ostensibly, the intention is that through this performative encounter, knowledge is imparted and the stranger becomes less strange. RARE, created by playwright Judith Thompson and an ensemble of disabled performers with Down Syndrome, stages just such an encounter between the audience and the autobiographical real. Using the lens of disability performance theory, this analysis of RARE considers how all autobiographical performance is entangled in questions about how the encounter with the real is shaped and to what end. The ethical instability of the situation combined with the risks of failed transmission invite the question: Why do we watch? Drawing on Sara Ahmed's description of the source of fear in intercultural encounter with the stranger as founded in hybridity, this article traces several points of hybridity in RARE. First, RARE presents a thematic thread that reifies popular perception of Down Syndrome as itself characterized by an uncomfortable hybridity between child and adult, between dependence and independence. Second, the production's staging choices present the performers' bodies as hybrid, challenging mimesis with irrepressible presence. Finally, it will be shown that the autobiographical form in performance itself expresses a hybridity that unsettles theatricality. Ultimately, autobiographical encounter does not authentically illuminate what it means to be another, but instead confronts the means of encounter, generating productive self-reflexive disruption of ingrained biases about both autobiography and strangers. La rencontre du << Moi >> et du << Toi >> est un element central du jeu autobiographique, ou l'interprete tente de transmettre une vision intime de ce que signifie etre soi a un assemblage de temoins curieux. L'intention apparente de cette rencontre par la performance est de transmettre un savoir qui permet a l'etrange(r) de devenir moins etrange. La piece RARE, cree par la dramaturge Judith Thompson et une troupe d'interpretes ayant le syndrome de Down, met en scene une telle rencontre entre le public et le reel autobiographique. A l'aide de theories de la performance avec handicap, Stephenson analyse cette production et montre comment toute performance autobiographique est traversee par des questions sur la facon dont la rencontre avec le reel est faconnee et a quelles fins. L'instabilite ethique de la situation, associee au risque d'une transmission ratee, souleve la question suivante : pourquoi regardons-nous? Partant de la description de Sara Ahmed, pour qui la source de la peur dans la rencontre interculturelle avec l'etranger reside dans l'hybridite, Stephenson retrace plusieurs points d'hybridite dans RARE. D'abord, la piece suit un fil thematique qui concretise la perception populaire du syndrome de Down comme relevant d'une hybridite genante de l'enfant et de l'adulte, de la dependance et de l'independance. Ensuite, la mise en scene presente les corps des artistes sur scene comme etant de nature hybride et mettant la mimesis a l'epreuve d'une presence irrepressible. Enfin, Stephenson montre que la forme autobiographique de la performance, plutot que de mettre en lumiere authentiquement ce que signifie etre un autre, problematise la rencontre et nous force a confronter nos prejuges sur l'autobiographie et l'etranger., Near the end of RARE, the cast of nine disabled performers respond to the prompt 'You know a word I hate?' with a litany of words they have heard others [...]