Wednesday, December 05, 2018
Disabled Artists Launch National Disability Theatre
AMERICAN THEATRE: A group of disabled theatre artists have announced the creation of National Disability Theatre, a company that will produce fully accessible live performances. The company will exclusively contract actors, designers, directors, and staff who have disabilities.
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I am quite excited to learn about this new theatre company. I went over and read every scrap of text on their website, and they have a very powerful team of ambitious people leading the company. It is not entirely clear where they are based, or where their productions will be (which is a major consideration, since their major goal is to have a company fully populated by people with disabilities), but it looks like they have a partnership with the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center is the home of the International Organization on Arts and Disability, and regularly wins awards for their accessibility initiatives. On National Disability Theatre’s homepage, there’s a clip of someone operating a flyrail, which I am particularly excited to see. They are focused on creating opportunities both on and off stage for artists with disabilities. It is my hope that the partnership leads to innovations in accessibility which can be applied in theaters throughout the country.
I think this is an amazing group of people doing an amazing thing. I will always advocate for more accessible theatre for all people, and I think that this organization might be a great stepping stone for the industry and a great example for other theatres to follow. Often the argument for not being accessible is no one knows how to do it, so looking to this theatre might enable other places to incorporate more accessibility into their venues and performances. I was also really excited to see that they are looking to create tech theatre opportunities as well, and looking to include people with disabilities as run crew and behind the scenes. I am always looking for ways to potentially modify processes to make them accessible to everyone, and I will definitely be following this theatre to look for examples of how to do that and how I can continue to make theatre as accessible as it can be.
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