Theater and Disability

We all have bodies. This is not a truism. It is not an exercise in the obvious. It is a fact—and a fact of a special kind. It is an incontestable fact. Everything we do, we do as or by means of our bodies. We cannot get beyond the fact that we are bodies. The body is, simply put, where everything in human culture begins and ends. (Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, 136)

I am a body. I am flesh and bone and organ and blood. I am neurons firing, ions being exchanged through sodium channels. I am oxygen binding to hemoglobin and acid and enzymes breaking down the chocolate covered espresso bean I just ate as it passes through my gut. I am the saliva in my mouth and the inflammation in my sacroiliac joints. I am my thumb joints, just slightly out of alignment. I am my cervical spine, pressed flat by my poor posture and I am my poor posture compensating for the bundle of nerve cells at the base of my spine misfiring. I am the 10,000 microbial species that exist inside my nose and under my armpit and in my small intestine and on my palm. I am my pineal gland producing melatonin as the hours wear on and I am my adrenal gland pumping cortisol to keep me awake. I am the 15 pills I swallow daily and the 7.42 shots I take yearly. I am my spinal cord and my rib cage. I am my uterus and my gallbladder. I am flesh and bone and organs and blood. You are too.

It is the best kept secret in the western world—that we are all flesh. We became too enamored with the enlightenment division of the mind and body and cartesian dualism and thought experiments where our brains are locked away in jars. We became distanced from the idea of pain with the invention of anesthesia in 1846 and we became distanced from the realities of physical labor with the introduction of the personal computer in 1981 and we became distanced from the physical impact of warfare with the first drone strike in 2004 and we became distanced from understanding bodies as truth with the invention of photoshop in 1988 and deepfakes in 2017. With each passing year we take yet another step away from the totalitarianism of the body and work to perfect our lives so that our body interferes with them as little as possible. We may care for our body, purchasing facemasks and diet pills and gym memberships and deodorant. But we do not care about our body.

And yet…the body will not be ignored forever.

And that is where disabled artists shine. In our divergent bodyminds we transform the notion of what theater can be. We walk and limp and roll and crutch our ways into theatrical spaces and explode the notion of what theater can be, of what presence means, of what hospitality can become.

The future of theater is accessible. It makes space for the multiplicity of bodies who create and the infinite variations of audience minds. It is neurodiverse. It is captioned and audio-described. It holds stairs instead of ramps and contains cushioned chairs that hold all sizes of bodies. It pushes the bounds of what our society believes humanity can be. It creates from a place of abundance, not scarcity.

Disability Advocacy and Access Consulting

As a disabled artist, I have often found myself in the position of advocating for my position in the room. But as a white, able-passing, cis woman, I have also found that I have the positional ability to put that privilege to use and advocate for others in the disability community, bringing their needs, their individual artistry, and their unique voice to the forefront of the conversation in any room I’m in.

While at the Yale School of Drama, I co-founded a disability affinity group and served on the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Working Group imagining new ways to make theater and theater training accessible. In this work I brought notions of radical accessibility and disability justice that I learned from scholars and advocates like Mia Mingus, Petra Kuppers, Alison Kafer, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

After leaving Yale, I continued this work as an accessibility consultant, working with theater organizations and venues to create new standards of accessibility that look beyond accommodation, and to evaluate the practices that they already have in place. I am honored to have been in the position to advocate for disability inclusion and for radical accessibility in organizations large and small and I bring this work into every position I hold.

Disability Research and Writing

In addition to my more practical work as an advocate and consultant, I have taken my work at the intersection of disability studies and theater into my academic work. I am currently working on my dissertation at the Yale School of Drama that proposes a new disability lens through which to view the western canon of dramatic work.

This focus has often spilled into my dramaturgy and critical lens and informed how I create and view performance. For a peak into that overlap, read my review of i wanna be with you everywhere, a festival of, by, and for Disabled makers at Performance Space New York, published in Theater Magazine. Read my review here.

Interested in discussing accessibility consulting for your organization or production? Want to discuss my scholarly work? Reach out!