Disability and Theatre

A Practical Manual for Inclusion in the Arts

Stephanie Barton Farcas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351973281
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Teatro

Disability and Theatre: A Practical Manual for Inclusion in the Arts is a step-by step manual on how to create inclusive theatre, including how and where to find actors, how to publicize productions, run rehearsals, act intricate scenes like fights and battles, work with unions, contracts, and agents, and deal with technical issues. This practical information was born from the author's 16 years of running the first inclusive theatre company in New York City, and is applicable to any performance level: children's theatre, community theatre, regional theatre, touring companies, Broadway, and academic theatre. This book features anecdotal case studies that emphasize problem solving, real-world application, and realistic action plans. A comprehensive Companion Website provides additional guidelines and hands-on worksheets.

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WHY THIS BOOK?

Figure 1.1 Richard III by William Shakespeare, 2015. Our production had every cast member except Richard III, and thus the society of the play, as disabled. L to R back row, Jessica Levesque as Clarence, Guy Ventoliere as Richard III, Estelle Olivia as Prince Edward, center L to R Perri Yaniv as Clarence (yep 2 Clarences!), Stephanie Gould as Norfolk and Joe Genera as Catesby. (Photograph courtesy of Nicu’s Spoon Theater Company.)

Why this book you may ask? Because there is not another ‘process’ book about this anywhere. There is no professional or academic manual about how to recruit, cast, rehearse, train and perform with a hugely diverse cast and with an emphasis on disabled artists. There is no other book that has cobbled together best practices from theatres working in this area. The de-mystifying and de-stigmatizing of this work must also be undertaken and this process must be disseminated to a wider audience, especially in the US and other countries where ‘normal’ is the apex of being and any deviation from it continues to be stigmatized and politicized. The investment in these communities must be emphasized and increased.

The 2016 election has polarized the US, however for those of us in the arts it only increases our ongoing and vital mandate that we practice active inclusion of all genders, sexual orientations, colors, races, religions and nationalities and disabilities. Art crosses political lines and emphasizes compassion and fairness. Art also energizes and inspires those who are marginalized to carry on as human beings. Art creates new platforms from which to create, speak and galvanize new audiences. This is part and parcel of our responsibility as arts makers and leaders. Far too often even those artists and teachers who work in this area are either too swamped to share their lessons and best practices or too worried about competition for funding or politics to share their ‘secrets’ to working. This has to change if this work is to grow and deepen. This has to change if we are to grow as artists and as a country.

This book will be anecdotal in many sections as it is the true human experience that needs to be shared to begin this de-mystifying process. Frequently in a historical, political or social context it has been the reluctance to view disabled people (and all the other marginalized groups I have worked with) as human that has propagated the mistreatment of them. Thus, anecdotal information and real-world experience casts us all in a real light and reveals artists with disabilities as the human beings they have always been. It serves as a reminder of the process we need to undertake. It’s not that academic English has no place in this, it is simply that it can be used as a distancing mechanism, in a way becoming a dialect of privilege, and that we do not want in this book.

A new way to think about accessibility has begun to happen in both the theatre and the academic community, as well as socially and politically. A new accessible theory which stops being a theory, stops non-dissemination of process and technique, stops encouraging ableism (the discrimination in favor of able-bodied people), encourages time and investment and thus goes into practice. While racist or sexist comments are often intentionally discriminatory, ableism is ingrained in our culture and people do not realize they’re propagating it. It’s often not driven by hatred or hostility, like discrimination towards a different race or gender, but comes from misguided compassion and societally reinforced pity and habit.

This book is by no means a manifesto, however, by virtue of the political climate in the US in the past, disability issues have always been set in a political context. By virtue of the societal baggage inherent in working with the disabled the subject matter has taken on, certainly, emotional, historical, vocabulary, political and personal undertones as well. So, all of these political, emotional and personal issues will be addressed in this book. There may be detractors who say, “These issues have nothing to do with staging for disability theatre or inclusion theatre.” However, it is my belief that these are in fact at the very foundation of this ongoing work. These undertones need to begin to be emphasized and taught in more academic settings as well.

What this book is: this is a detailed and user-friendly how-to manual essentially from start to finish. How to find, audition, rehearse, tech, perform, design, PR and market, run and close a professional full-length show with a variety of performers and staff and crew who are disabled involved. All colors, genders, ages and disabilities. This book mostly, out of necessity, focuses on the artists with disabilities, but all of these standards are applicable to all marginalized groups. My company has, over the seventeen years we have produced, worked with artists with Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS), cerebral palsy (CP), blindness, deafness, multiple sclerosis (MS), epilepsy, many artists on the autism spectrum, amputees, alcoholics, stutterers, those who have had polio and spina bifida, little people, burn victims, those with cancer, artists with a spectrum of birth defects and/or degenerative diseases, traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), sensory integration disorder, muscular dystrophy, developmental disorders, stroke, bipolar disorders, manic depressives, severe asthmatics, spinal cord injuries and many more. You can work together with them too.

Thus, this book is not a heavily footnoted discourse on the lack of foundation in previous theories written about in this field. There are not many major theories in this field, although I would encourage reading in disability studies in general. This book is not an uplifting saga of disabled folks that will soon be a movie of the week. The artists and practitioners do not need that type of yadda-yadda. Disabled artists (as well as older, gay, transgendered, immigrant and so forth) want and need equal training, work and support and creative problem solving as artists, and really don’t we all want that? Disabled artists and activists are now working daily to ensure they get respect, jobs and work. The international disabled community understands that they must take media coverage, social activism and politics into their own hands. They do not need pity or placation, just solid formal training, work and support.

When approached from a practitioner point of view there is nothing more difficult about making art with artists with disabilities than with anyone else. It is past time to get pity and old assumptions about the needs or the costs or the ‘problems’ of working with disabled artists set straight. Those academics or casting directors out there with the outdated assumptions often are the ones hiring local artists and running theatres and they have to get on board with the reality of it all. It is their job to remove obstacles to creating art and give the community what it needs. Obstacles do not only refer to the physical. Some of those obstacles may in fact be other people and the societal acceptance of certain behaviors the non-disabled think nothing of. For one simple example, far too many non-disabled people use handicapped bathroom stalls and take up space in crowded elevators, paying no attention to those with disabilities who do not have any other options, without a second thought. Parking in handicapped parking spaces to quickly run into a store has also become ingrained in our society as something to do, ‘real quick’.

While these actions may not (or may) be meant meanly, they are hard and fast evidence of the way non-disabled privilege still manifests in our society. What manifests in our society is what continues to be represented in casting, educational training, employment and vocabulary. These are key areas where all obstacles must be removed.

Significant obstacles continue to exist for individuals with disabilities who want to pursue careers in the arts. Things like lack of access to solid, appropriate, professional training and education in the arts, limited exposure to updated information and resources about the range of career opportunities as artists, arts technicians or arts administrators, as well as lack of formal training, recruitment or hiring opportunities at all (especially in the technical, management and design fields). Couple these issues with lack of familial support, lack of role models, lack of hiring in academic settings, lack of support from recruiters, fear of losing disability benefits, lack of support from counselors and art programs and it seems impossible (and we haven’t even mentioned getting cast). The worst thing is the constant stereotyped rejection of disability content in the arts, or disabled artists in general, as essentially maudlin and not up to professional standards.

Many theatre companies and producers continue to have fears about assimilating artists with disabilities into the larger arts community, believing it will cause restrictions on funding or loss of box office revenue and audiences (actually I have found the reverse to be true), worrying about endless transportation and accommodation needs, and loss of their own funds due to benefits planning for artists with disabilities. These fears are greatly unfounded and stem from lack of information and completely archaic notions. As long as you have all the realistic information you need and look at it seriously those concerns melt away.

The problem is that most universities, regional theatres or theatre production companies do not want to look at this seriously. They do not really want those concerns to melt away. It is easier to not think about it. But the world catches up with you and audiences are much more savvy nowadays. In truth it is no more time consuming working with a disabled artist than it is dealing with an actor who has memorization problems and no more expensive than dealing with an actor who has a hard commute into New York City from New Jersey for rehearsals.

For those artists with disabilities who get the training and become artists and technicians and designers, the top three areas identified by them as their priorities to really advance their careers are their professional development in professional (paying) settings, funding and financial costs and strategies on how to work and yet keep their disability benefits (and this last issue is one they grapple with alone, usually not one that impacts their employers). It is up to us, as the practitioners who can hire them to address these issues with them and use this deep well of human resources in our collective art.

Let us be frank as well about the organizations not wanting to actively work with disabled artists because they fear the artists won’t be good enough, the productions won’t be good enough or that they will have to ask their audience to applaud substandard work out of pity. This fear usually comes from those very people who do not make an effort to create any educational or casting opportunities for these same artists to get training to be good enough to applaud for. It becomes a repetitive cycle of non change. These are the organizations most in need of change. Enough of this. These are all outdated ideologies and just not true.

This book not only takes you step-by-step through the entire production process, but comes with a variety of short case studies or an action plan at the end of most chapters. Most of the case studies illustrate creative problem solving and a successful outcome, but not all. Perhaps the most important case studies are where the problems were only partially solved or not solved at all, for then we learn what does not work. The case studies do illustrate the most important aspect though, trying. Trying to work and problem solve and create. Just getting started, that is what is important.

Who is this book then for? Practitioners and human resource folks first and foremost, drama therapists, board members, community theatres, regional and local theatres, any theatre company of any size and makeup, directing and producing students in college, theatre and stage management students, academics and their classes, architects and theatre planners, fundraisers, grant writers, stage management students, social scientists, scholars in the humanities, disability rights advocates, creative writers and others concerned with the issues of people with disabilities, college recruiters and educators, casting directors, disabled advocates and activists and artists of all kinds.

It is time to get serious about training and creating work with artists with disabilities, with one in five Americans having a disability and one in six eligible voters being disabled (and with each battle we fight overseas that increases as our veterans return home) and globally around 550?million disabled people. My company has, over the past seventeen years, staged original works, company-generated works, classics, Shakespeare, musicals, Pulitzer Prize winners, children’s shows, plays by disabled and non-disabled playwrights and has done it all with an enormous spectrum of disabled artists. Let go of your fears and read this book. It will give you needed information and some starting places so that you and/or your organization can move forward creatively. If you ignore artists with disabilities, then you ignore twenty percent of your audience base and twenty percent of a wealth of talent. Get more information so you can do the work.

Case Study 1: A Seizure Onstage, Nicu’s Spoon Theater, New York City

History

So, what do I mean by having all the information? In order to produce theatre and work with disabled artists you must know certain things about them. Sometimes they may not tell you those things and you find out the hard way.

Our company, Nicu’s Spoon, was founded in 2001 and was producing its second show ever in 2002 in a theatre in midtown Manhattan, an extremely well-known play which had had heavy audience attendance. Expectations were very high for the play itself and for this production. We had a cast of sixteen made up of five nationalities and nearly one-quarter of our cast was disabled, though at least one had a ‘hidden disability.’ Some common hidden or ‘invisible’ disabilities include TBI, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), psychiatric disorders and many others that have no immediate outward signs yet are permanent disabilities. Being in our second year of production I had some passing experience with hidden disabilities in my life background and at that time the term ‘hidden disabilities’ was only starting to be talked about as new disabilities were added to it.

One of the young actors in a fairly major role had a hidden disability, he was epileptic, and only one person in the cast knew about it. That one person was not me nor the production staff. The play proceeded that night as usual and I was aware that this actor’s divorced parents were in the audience that night, causing him some stress. He had not been eating or sleeping well as a result. He was an extremely talented young man, and also very skinny and a bit physically delicate. Nearly ten minutes into the play mid-sentence his eyes rolled up into his head and he slammed to the ground in a grand mal epileptic seizure. The actors onstage froze, the audience froze, the production staff and technicians froze and the play screeched to a stop.

Plan

What would you do next? What we did is in the back of this book, but you work this out. You have a full audience in midtown Manhattan, who have paid to see this well-known, Pulitzer Prize winning play and they have seen only ten minutes of it. You have fifteen fellow actors who are now traumatized and angered by this ongoing seizure, you have no doctor on staff, and none of the production staff, or you, the producer, knew he had epilepsy, and so on. What do you do? How do you save face, save the show, save the actor and still keep your profits?

Now, in working with artists with disabilities (any artists, really) you should always have them disclose anything to you that can interrupt the play (seizures, aversion to strobe lights, allergy to fog machines or wool, etc.) but some may not. A terrific way to handle hidden disabilities is to talk early to the full cast and explain what hidden disability means at a cast meeting, the first read-through is appropriate, and simply request that anyone with anything to share should let you know privately.

There is an ‘intimacy of disability’ when working with disabled artists, an intimacy because you as director or producer are privy to knowledge about an artist’s body (and their emotions) and how it functions in a way you are usually not privy to with a non-disabled artist. This circle of intimacy is a very special place to work with an artist and is as important, if not more so, as the practical work you do with them. Many times I have talked with artists who were not born with a disability, but became disabled later in life. I always tell them that they are still an artist, but now they are a different artist. They still have a body, but now it is...