www.kshb.com/news: Audience members won't see Rebekah Grieb on stage during performances of "The Full Monty," currently in production at the Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center, but she's the one who keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes.
She also happens to be legally blind.
5 comments:
I originally came to Carnegie Mellon School of Drama to study stage management. In high school, it was my passion, and I had big dreams of becoming a broadway stage manager. I will not lie, I've had thoughts before of what would happen to me and my career if I went blind. The thought was usually inspired by the conversation of "what sense would you lose if you had to lose one", and I never picked sight, as I thought it was a necessity for my job. However, I have been proven wrong, as Rebekah Grieb is a legally blind stage manager. I will say, I think this article title is a bit misleading. Yes, Rebekah is blind, but not in the way we traditionally think of blindness. She has some sight. I want to clarify, I am not at all saying she is invalid in her disability, or that it does not cause her life to be harder. She isn't able to look at things head-on, something I would consider important for calling cues. I would love to hear about how she deals with this, as the article didn't go into much detail. That was my critique in general, the article was very short, and didn't state much about what tools Rebekah has created to help herself work better.
This article was incredibly inspiring. I found my love for stage management in high school. It is what I plan on declaring in December. Stage management is already such a hard job and this woman has found success despite being legally blind which is just so badass. A good theatre department will always be able to support and accommodate people with disabilities both on and off stage. Over the last couple of decades but especially over the last couple of years the theatre industry as a whole has been shifting to become more accessible for many different areas of people. This is something that is a long time coming and something that I personally think will make the theatre industry even more incredible. Everyone on this planet provides a different perspective and all of these can be used to build stories that represent a larger group of people than the constant remakes of shows everyone already knows. I am so happy for Rebekah and I hope to continue to hear similar stories.
As a manager myself, I was happy to come across this article about Rebekah Grieb. I think often there have been times when people have been talking about their careers and said something along the lines of “I hope I don’t go blind, I couldn’t do my job”. To me, I think this points to a necessity to ensure that entertainment and theater is more accessible to everyone & anyone who wants to participate. Hence, my happiness to hear about Grieb’s work and her ability to enjoy the job that she is doing in a way that works for her. I would love to know more about her process and how she sets up her rehearsal room/calling script/production work in general to work in the best way possible for her. I think more recently there has been more and more conversation about accessibility in entertainment, and this is definitely a great addition to the conversation.
This is such a cool article. I wish is was about twice as long, because I would love to hear from Rebekah about her experiences backstage with her vision loss. I find learning to be a manager with no disabilities a really big challenge in myself. I cannot imagine being a full fledged manager and dealing with vision loss or any other kind of disability. I hold Rebekah and other disabled folks in the theatre industry in a high high regard. I am glad that Rebekah had found a community in the treater world that has been accepting and accommodating of her needs and will obviously benefit from her skills. I hope that everyone who enters this industry with a disability or challenge of their own can find that same space and be able to flex their own skills in their area of our field. Huge respect and appreciation to Rebekah.
I love to see anything that brings in and promotes accessibility especially when it comes to theatre. I think theatre is a space where accessibility is often over looked with many theaters being old and not having handicap access as well as shows having no way to be seen by someone who has hearing or vision impairments. I think the overall issue of accessibility when it comes to theater can be something overcome by more people within the creative and production process advocating for these issues and showing that filling in these types of roles is possible and can be successful. Theatre is supposed to be an industry for all however we see it be dominated by white able bodied individuals. People coming working in the industry showing that anything is possible is the way we move forward much like this stage manager and much like Ali Stroker who was in the Broadway revival of Oklahoma.
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