HowlRound Theatre Commons: As a wheelchair user, Belluso, who died in 2006, wrote complex and richly nuanced plays that defied the dominant disability narrative of “extraordinary-individual-who-overcomes-personal-tragedy.” Instead, he provided a critical examination of how American society treats individuals with disabilities. Resisting the commercial desire for these stories to be inspirational, Belluso’s work challenges audiences to view disability as an experience shaped by socially constructed notions.
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This article made me think about how it isn't just playwrights, or actors, or directors, or casting people who have to think about increasing the inclusion of disabled actors, staff and playwrights into the seasons; in a technical perspective, designs may have to be considered to be more accessible, space for caption projections, etc. A budget needs to be adjusted to allocate for interpreters, or other like staff. Making our theaters more accessible and authentic will be a company-wide endeavor. I think some of the things to take away from this article, according to the writer, are that communication between all members of the process (creative to actors to audience) needs to be increased. This is especially so because a lot of the content is not going to rest easy with the general public. Because these authentic stories aren't ones of meaning to be only for inspiration, there are going to be a lot of myths busted, and truths exposed. That is going to make pretty much everyone, uncomfortable. However, it is necessary. It forces us to actually listen to the voices we don't normally give any time to. The author talks about how theater is becoming more inclusive, but still behind improvements in racial, gender, (etc.) portrayals, disability inclusion has a long ways to go.
I think representation and inclusion of people with disabilities is one of the biggest inequalities that currently exists in the theater industry. As this article points out, there are very few plays about people with disabilities and work by playwrights with disabilities is rarely produced. Ableism is pretty baked into the theater industry. Theater buildings often are not accessible, and if they are it is often only accessible for the audience. When talking to people in the theater industry I’ve heard many people say they don’t think a person with a particular disability would be able to do a particular job, often times stating an ability that is completely unrelated to the job. Theater is rarely about people with disabilities or by people with disabilities, and then people with disabilities are offered very limited opportunities within theater due to a combination of infrastructure issues and preconceived notions. I think a lot more people with disabilities would go see theater or work in theater if the industry stopped focusing almost inclusively on able bodied people and not thinking about accessibility as unimportant.
The lack of presence of disability in theatre is a massive detriment to our community. There is so little work about characters with a disability or work written, directed, designed, or performed by people with a disability. Beyond that, there is even less work that involves a character with a disability, but doesn’t make that disability a plot point. In this exclusion ingrained in our world, we hurt our entire community. People want to see shows that they can relate to, that they can see themselves in, and the fact that we don’t allow that is shameful. In excluding stories from the theatrical community, we lose authenticity. We cannot say that theatre reflects ‘the human condition’ if we are putting parameters on what ‘human’ is. Theatre is doing its job when people are uncomfortable because it is forcing reflection, so avoiding theatre that makes a certain person uncomfortable makes the entire practice useless.
I found this article to be very interesting and I was very happy to read that more and more theater that features disabled playwrights and stories is being created. It is always surprising to me how few plays about disabilities are mainstream and popular given, as John Belluso said, “it is the one minority class in which anyone can become a member at any time.” I thought the article did a good job of pointing out the flaws in mainstream media surrounding disabilities and how, even if something is written about disabilities, it is often a clichéd story that presents disabilities as something that can always be overcome. I hope to see more theater in the future that presents this topic in an honest way, in which people with disabilities are shown to have lives that do not only revolve around their disability. I thought the author made the very interesting point that disability will, in fact, affect everyone in their lifetime, and, given that, I find it even more surprising how little literature is out there on this topic. There has certainly been an increase in literature on this topic in the past few years and I hope it continues to grow.
As someone who would much rather see the article “ten great things that happened this week” then “ten terrible things that happened this week, the concept of “Inspiration Porn” drives a lot of the media I personally see on a day to day basis. Even on the small level of The Dodo’s snapchat stories about dogs with three legs and kittens that started as the smallest sickest little runt. Just today I watched something about a puppy with a cleft palate growing up to be a great dog. I see the benefit; it's nice to watch something “inspiring” and mostly just a little less depressing than the current media, but I also see the negatives. By just showing the inspiring stories we are not really focusing on the everyday stories that drive change. We are completely ignoring the way the world treats disabled people, all the while making ourselves feel better about raising up “inspiration”. Overall this article reminded me to take each piece of media I see with a grain of salt, and recognize the choice I made by reading this particular article and perpetrating the whole system.
This article reminded me of a very important point, which is that my feelings of how inclusive theater are must always be challenged. I think theater is one of the best ways to do this, you take real people, performing live as an entirely new person with an audience of people they don’t know. People can tell their stories of lives entirely different, yet still relatable as the overall human experience. If done well, can both challenge a person in their beliefs, make them laugh, and make them cry. People fear the unknown, and stories on disability are often hard to “do right” because of this. Being able to really understand what it’s like to live with disability as a fully able person takes a lot of research, as well as real life experience. It’s really important to have disabled voices in the room when creating these types of plays, to make sure the experience is truly an authentic one, and does right to the people whose lives are being portrayed.
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