#Antony Sher

[nerdbrazil]

[cutebottledspider]

« I thank the company for supporting me through what has sometimes been an emotionally challenging rehearsal period. I tell them throughout the process, Tony has been on my shoulder, like a bad prosthetic hump, not letting me get away with anything, pushing me to see things freshly, to look harder, explore deeper, fail better.

That, for me, is his legacy. To demand the best. We are the Royale Shakespeare Company after all.

And I tell them, as we step together into the hall of mirrors that is any press night, that whatever the critics may say, I am very proud of what we all achieved together.

Later, as the performance ends, and with my sister Jo, as always by my side on press night, I choke back a tear as Arthur runs on for his bow, and the audience cheer and as one, rise to their feet. »

From « My Shakespeare » by Greg Doran

[mywingsareonwheels]

OKAY grammatical feelings about Falstaff&Hal and Thursday&Morse

“I know thee not, old man.”

As any gnarled, middle-aged one-time English literature graduate knows, “thee/thou/thy/thine” is the now lost English equivalent of “tu/toi” etc. in French, and other informal+singular second person pronouns in any number of languages. In English we now use “you” for everyone, which was originally the formal and/or plural one.

It’s quite a recent loss, actually. As in, its continuing use in parts of rural Yorkshire etc. was still a thing in living memory. If you’ve ever watched The Last of the Summer Wine you may note that Compo uses “thee/thou” at times. But I digress.

[oh this got a bit long. ;-) Cut for length and spoilers for series 9 of Endeavour. Also content-warning for a bit of fatphobia in a quotation from Henry IV part 2.]

One of the things I find fascinating when reading Shakespeare and his contemporaries is when characters switch between “you” and “thou”. Sometimes it’s desperately moving - that moment when Benedick first uses “thou” for Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing is... fuck. Done right it’s an absolutely fizzing moment even now. That sudden intimacy.

I’m currently making a much more concerted effort to revive my French at the moment, and there was a moment in an episode of Dix Pour Cent I was watching earlier where a character suddenly switched from saying “vous” to “tu” to another character, and I went back to rewatch it with the French subtitles because I was sure I’d heard it, and I had. The English subtitles added a “darling” to give that moment its full impact. It was huge.

So to the Henry IV plays. Hal’s been using “thou” for Falstaff much of the two plays, and vice versa. Strictly speaking as Hal is the heir to the throne and Falstaff is just a knight (and a pretty rubbish one at that) Hal has the right to “thou” him in a higher-status-to-lower kind of a way anyway, but that’s not how he uses it, and Falstaff “thou”ing him, and Hal letting him? It shows the closeness of their friendship and quasi father-and-son relationship, however fraught it frequently is. It’s also worth noting that some of Falstaff’s friends also have been known to use “thou” for Hal (including Pistol).

But we’ve also known since early in Henry IV part 1 and *boy* do we continue to get hints, that once Hal is crowned, he’s going to chuck Falstaff and the others for good.

So here’s the newly-crowned King Henry V (formerly Hal, now King in this text which I just nabbed from the Folger library website) being greeted by Falstaff and Pistol. [NB: This is the bit with the fatphobia I warned for above]

* * * * * * * * *

[Enter the King and his train.] FALSTAFF: God save thy Grace, King Hal, my royal Hal. PISTOL: The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame! FALSTAFF: God save thee, my sweet boy! KING: My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man. CHIEF JUSTICE, to Falstaff: Have you your wits? Know you what ’tis you speak? FALSTAFF, to the King: My king, my Jove, I speak to thee, my heart! KING: I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester. I have long dreamt of such a kind of man, So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane; But being awaked, I do despise my dream.

* * * * * * * *

And he continues in that vein for about another twenty lines, during which Falstaff’s heart completely breaks.

It’s usual for Hal/the King to not exactly be on happy form himself. Alex Hassell, in the RSC version with Antony Sher as Falstaff, pretty much delivers those lines as one enormous panic attack. He’s even more immediately devastated than Sher’s Falstaff, who seems to be fending off his misery with denial. Jamie Parker’s Hal in the Globe production with Roger Allam as Falstaff is slightly less broken but not much less; Allam’s Falstaff just fricking falls apart before our eyes.

(Darn actor allusions in Endeavour. [sniffs])

Anyway. This brings me to Morse.

Thursday isn’t Falstaff. Yes, he’s arguably a father figure for Morse, and loves him. And in this moment Morse is at least considering rejecting him once and for all, with good reason. But Falstaff’s a consistently terrible person (not for any of the reasons Hal gives in that desperately painful speech, I more mean things like cheerfully accepting bribes leading to the deaths in battle of impoverished men he was meant to be leading and barely being sorry about it); Thursday is a mostly good but flawed and traumatised person who has made a series of massive fuck-ups under extreme pressure. Rather different.

And Morse and Hal use that phrase “I know thee not old man” so differently. Hal can’t know Falstaff any more and be the king he wants to be. It’s an absolute rejection.

Morse quotes Hal but does so more literally: he doesn’t know Thursday any more. There’s the potential for rejection there, but mostly he’s feeling lost and wants Thursday to help him understand why he did what he did.

Both these pairs part permanently. But with Hal and Falstaff it’s entirely tragic; with Morse and Thursday more bittersweet, as in the end they do part as friends, still clearly loving each other.

But here also is the thing:-

Is Hal saying “I know thee not, old man” just because he has the right in the stupid classist society in which he lives to “thee” an elderly knight in some contempt because he’s the king? Or is he falling back on the habit of using “thee” for him? Or is he expressing an absolute contradiction in terms, deploying the informality of closeness? Of “I don’t know you, friend”.

Morse knows his Shakespeare, and I can’t believe that with his language skills he wouldn’t be aware of what “thee” means. And Morse isn’t Thursday’s boss let alone king, even if they’re no longer inspector and bagman.

So when Morse says “I know thee not, old man”... it’s absolutely that contradiction. Denying and acknowledging understanding and closeness in the same breath. It’s very Morse. It’s very them. Ow.

Oh. Here’s another thought:-

Within the timescale of Shakespeare’s history plays (which are rather more conflated than actual history), Falstaff’s dead within a year, specifically of the broken heart that Hal gives him in the scene I quote above. It’s reported early on in the play Henry V. You know, the one which Falstaff isn’t in, that follows Hal’s later career...

If Morse and Thursday hadn’t made up to the extent that they do... would the same thing have happened to Thursday? Would Morse have accidentally cursed him, really making him his Falstaff? :-/ I mean, if Thursday had been arrested then obviously he would have died soon after one way or another, I think that’s plain for various reasons. But I mean, if Morse had still protected Thursday but they had parted in the heat of the pain and bitterness Morse betrays in that line, without the softening and love that’s apparent in their final scene together? We’re talking about a show that does stray into fantasy at times, after all.

[shakespearenews]

Which productions is he proudest of? He hesitates before offering: Hamlet (2008) with Tennant, adding that it “landed”. In a phone conversation with Tennant, I ask what he remembers about it and he says: “I was terrified, but having Greg there, you always felt safe. He knew how these plays worked. The first thing we talked about was that Hamlet would be a thriller. The challenge – with arguably the most well-known play in theatre – was to see if we could pull off the trick of making the audience feel they did not know what was coming next.”

...

Doran struggles to define his “process”, but one thing is crucial: he skips the traditional read-through on the first day of rehearsals. Instead, the cast spend days working through Shakespeare line by line: “There are a few rules: no one can read their own parts or comment on the interpretation of their own characters.” It is a great way to encourage collective responsibility for a production. He believes a director should not get between play and audience. This might involve “not knowing but exploring, trusting the play will reveal itself”. You need to “love the language. It’s a craft that doesn’t necessarily come naturally: you need to work at it”.

[perfettamentechic]

2 dicembre … ricordiamo …

2 dicembre … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

2022: Al Strobel, Albert Michael Strobel, attore statunitense. È principalmente noto per il ruolo di MIKE/Philip Michael Gerard “L’uomo con un braccio solo” nella serie televisiva I segreti di Twin Peaks (1990-1991). A causa di un incidente automobilistico che subì da adolescente, gli fu amputato il braccio sinistro. (n.1939) 2021: Antony Sher, attore e scrittore sudafricano naturalizzato…

[ulrichgebert]

Die herrliche romantische Komödie über den verliebten Stückeschreiber Shakespeare (hier als Amme verkleidet) und all die schönen Verwicklungen, die letztlich die Entstehung seiner angekündigten Komödie Romeo und Ethel, die Piratentochter verhindern, ist auch schon wieder 25 Jahre alt. Zeigt einmal mehr, wie sich Kunst und Leben imitieren und bietet Theaterzauber, Gwyneth Paltrow mit Schnurrbart (Hurrah! Crossdressing!), prächtige Roben, Judi Dench in einer besonders kurzen Oscar-Rolle, die Eheleute Carter/Staunton als Ammen, sowie überraschend den nicht genannten Rupert Everett.

[cinemacentral666]

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Movie #1,084 • FRIDAY FILL-IN

This came out 2 years and 9 months before 9/11. There's no way to say if this was a coincidence or not and I am no way insinuating that the release of Shakespeare in Love had anything to do with the towers falling on that fateful day. But facts are facts.

Look, I don't have much to say about this. When I reviewed the very blah Captain Corelli's Mandolin for The Year of Cage project, I thought it was funny that it was Coach John Madden's follow-up to this Oscar-slaying "little movie that could." It's also funny that, at the time, this was scene as such an underdog, because it seems EXACTLY like the type of movie that would clean up at the Academy Awards when viewed today. This is all to say that it's completely fine. It's not my bag but I could totally see how and why it would be someone's favorite film of all-time. I was also struck by its tone, which is explicitly going for a romcom vibe. In my memory, it was a much more serious movie but honestly if that had been the case, it probably would have been even worse.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

[claudia1829things]

"THE MOONSTONE" (1996) Review

"THE MOONSTONE" (1996) Review

Following my viewing of the 1997 television movie, "THE WOMAN IN WHITE", I followed up with an adaptation of another Wilkie Collins' novel, "THE MOONSTONE". Like the other adaption, this adaptation had been produced back in the 1990s as a television movie.

Based on Collins' 1868 novel, "The Moonstone: A Romance", "THE MOONSTONE" was an early modern detective story that centered around the theft of a valuable gem. A young English socialite named Rachel Verinder inherits a large Indian diamond called "a moonstone" on her eighteenth birthday. The gem is a legacy from her uncle, a corrupt British army officer named Colonel Sir John Hardcastle, who had stolen it from a religious idol, while serving in India. The diamond is of great religious significance and extremely valuable, and three Hindu priests have dedicated their lives to recovering it. Although Sir John's theft of the Moonstone had involved murder, he was never punished for his crimes. But he ended up shunned by society and his sister, Lady Julia Verinder. In retaliation for the shunning, Sir John leaves it in his will as a birthday gift to his niece Rachel, exposing her to the attentions of the gem's legal guardians.

On the night of her birthday party, Rachel wears her new present. Lady Julia, Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake and the local Dr. Candy all seem very anxious over Rachel's possession of the Moonstone. Especially since a trio of Indian jugglers had appeared at the Verinder estate. Later that night, the gem disappears from Rachel's room. Stolen. Suspicion first falls upon the three Indian jugglers. But retired Scotland Yard investigator, Sergeant Cuff believes the theft was an inside job. His suspicions fall upon one of the Verinders' servants, Rosana Spearman; and Rachel, whom he believes harbored plans to use the diamond to pay off secret debts.

I really do not know how to start this review, if I must be honest. I believe a good deal of my feelings originated from how I feel about Collins' story. I have never read his novel. But I have seen at least three adaptations of it to get a pretty good grasp of it. I must admit that director Robert Bierman and screenwriter Kevin Elyot did a very good job in setting up Collins' tale in this adaptation. They did not rush through the narrative in order to arrive on the night of the theft. And Elyot's screenplay also did an excellent job in exploring the novel's main characters - especially Rachel Verinder, her mother Lady Julia, the Verinders' major domo Gabriel Betterege and Franklin Blake. The movie also did a first-rate job in conveying the details of Blake and Cuff's investigation of the theft, along with Rachel's strange behavior. But once their investigation hit a dead end and the story moved on to the third act . . . I started having problems with the movie.

I could blame Wilkie Collins and his novel. Or I could blame the movie's screenwriter for trying to adhere as closely to Collins' story as possible. But after Franklin resumed the investigation of the Moonstone's theft a year after the incident, "THE MOONSTONE" seemed to be piled with nothing but contrived writing. I can only assume that Collins had wanted to deliver a surprise twist to his readers when he revealed who had taken the gem. I was certainly surprised when I first saw this film. And after three or four years, I have remained . . . dissatisfied with the revelation. I mean . . . seriously? And the series of events that led to the theft also struck me as contrived. But that was nothing in compare to the events that led to the Moonstone's final fate. To this day, a part of me wishes that the filmmakers had changed some of Collins' narrative for this movie.

At least I had no problem with the film's production values. Sarah Greenwood's production designs struck me as first-rate in her re-creation of Great Britain during the late 1840s. I was especially impressed by her creation of London during that period. Philip Robinson's art direction, the film's Art Department and John Daly's cinematography ably contributed to her work. I especially enjoyed Daly's photography of the marshes in Norfolk that served as the setting for one very memorable scene. I also admired James Keast's costume designs. His costumes struck me as a near accurate reflection of the film's late 1840s setting. I must admit that I found those costumes for the upper-class female characters a bit on the dull side. Was this dullness a direct reflection of elite women's fashion of that period? Perhaps someone can answer that for me.

Both Greg Wise and Keeley Hawes gave solid performances as the movie's romantic leads - Franklin Blake and Rachel Verinder. I cannot deny that the pair possessed some semblance of screen chemistry, especially during the film's first half hour. But they never really had the opportunity to develop that chemistry, since their characters spent most of the film at odds with one another or apart. The movie also featured solid performances from the likes of Scott Handy, Patricia Hodge, Anton Lesser, Peter Jeffrey, Paul Brooke, a menacing performance from Terence Hardiman as the slightly sinister Col. Sir John Hardcastle, and a rather entertaining performance from Kacey Ainsworth as the Verinders' holy roller cousin Drusilla Clark. Which leads me to my favorite performances in the movie.

One of those performances came from Peter Vaughan, who portrayed the Verinder family's steadfast majordomo, Gabriel Betterege. Not only did Vaughan did an excellent job in conveying Betterege's intelligence, but also the character's sharp humor. I really enjoyed his performance. Another performance that impressed me was Antony Sher, who portrayed the botanical loving former Scotland Yard detective, Sergeant Richard Cuff. I believe real life Victorian police detective Jack Whicher had inspired Collins' creation of Cuff. But Sher injected a touch of humorous eccentricity to the character that made his performance so enjoyable to me. One last performance had impressed me and it came from Lesley Sharp, who portrayed one of the Verinders' maids, Rosanna SpearmanR. Sharp gave an etheral, yet intense performance as the lovesick Rosanna, which left a haunting cloud over the story before the last reel.

Would I regard this 1996 television movie as the best adaptation of Wilkie Collins' novel? Hmmm . . . perhaps not. I have seen other adaptations that had delved into the narrative with a bit more detail. And the ending of this film seemed to rush a bit toward the end. However, I did managed to enjoy "THE MOONSTONE" very much. And thanks to Robert Bierman's direction, Kevin Elyot's screenplay and excellent performances from a cast led by Greg Wise and Keeley Hawes, I would have no problems doing a rewatch of this film over and over again.

[denimbex1986]

'...I’ve seen plenty of A-list Macbeths over the years including Derek Jacobi, Roger Allam, Antony Sher and Jonathan Pryce along with dozens of less famous ones but David Tennant blew my socks off. He has an exceptional talent for making every word of Shakespeare’s text sound naturalistic and inclusively modern. I’ve noticed this before but never so much as in this startling, original production.

It will be remembered as “the one with the headphones”. Every seat has a pair with a clear channel to each ear and audience members are told that they won’t be able to hear the show without them. The effect is astonishing. The sound design (Gareth Fry) provides murmurs, cackles, and sinister breathing when the witches are about. There’s a raven which screeches from right to left so convincingly it’s hard not to duck. And it means that the cast doesn’t have to project vocally. You can have real whispers and muttering as well as soliloquies which really sound like thoughts. Tennant’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” was the most moving I’ve ever heard because it was conversational. And the sound effects at the murder of Lady Macduff are almost unbearable...

Cush Jumbo is both chilling and vulnerable as Lady Macbeth and the chemistry she and Tennant create together is wonderfully rich so the tragedy of that breaking down is desperately painful. Her sleepwalking presents a pitiful figure whose mind has completely blown and I liked the idea of substituting her for Ross before the Macduff murders to create a sense of female solidarity, helpless as it is.

There’s a strong performance from Noof Ousellam as Macduff. When he hears of the killings at Fife his reaction is electrifying although changing “dam” to hen” in “all my pretty chickens and their dam” sounds peculiar. And Casper Knopf did a fine job on press night (he alternates with Raffi Phillips) as Fleance, the McDuff boy and Young Siward. The whole audience winces when Tennant despatches him in the latter role...

This could be a “marmite” production. Some people probably won’t like certain aspects of it but it stands for me as one of the most powerful and interesting takes on the play I’ve ever seen...'

[klc-archive]

A short clip from Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride where mole first meets the weasels.

[ofsmokenandgold]

"Our God is not good, he was never good, he was only ever on our side." As Israel returns to shelling Gaza this morning, I can't help thinking about this speech. From Frank Cotterill Boyce's adaptation of Elie Wiesel's play The Trial of God, I give you the transcendental Antony Sher.

[justforbooks]

Towards the end of his life, the actor Adrian Schiller, who has died unexpectedly aged 60, found success and sudden fame in two blockbuster TV shows: The Last Kingdom (2018-22), on Netflix, in which he played the richest man in medieval Wessex, Aethelhelm; and ITV’s drama Victoria (2016-19), as Cornelius Penge, a footman in the royal household.

In both, a fleeting glance would suggest that here was a naturally authoritative actor, blessed with gravitas and style. This camouflaged the demonic comic spirit within, which had informed so many of his memorable stage performances since he first appeared in the German Expressionist Carl Sternheim’s 1911 play The Knickers at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1991. In a delicious comic performance, he played a weak-chested Wagner-loving barber thunderstruck by a flash of discarded lingerie as the Kaiser drove by, suggesting, said the Times critic, “a tousle-headed combination of Charlie Chaplin, Egon Schiele and Gollum, whose idea of romance is reading extracts from the Flying Dutchman”.

Schiller proceeded to leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1990s – his Porter in a disappointing 1996 Macbeth was the funniest I had ever seen, while his entertaining Touchstone in an awful 2000 designer knitwear production of As You Like It rescued another dud evening.

He was less prominent in some strange productions at the National – Peter Handke’s wordless The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other in 2008, as one of 27 actors playing 450 characters in a town square, coming and going with no interaction, and as a revolutionary tailor in a poor 2013 retread of Carl Zuckmayer’s 1931 Captain of Kopenick, in which Antony Sher did not eclipse memories of Paul Scofield in the NT’s 1971 production.

On the other hand, he was outstanding in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, superbly directed, and modernised, by Benedict Andrews at the Young Vic in 2012, playing Kulygin, a leather-jacketed schoolteacher tragically infatuated with his own disloyal wife; and he was a compelling, original, quietly spoken and sympathetic Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at the Wanamaker, the candle-lit indoor venue at Shakespeare’s Globe, in 2022. The Merchant rekindled the current noise around the play – is it antisemitic or about antisemitism?

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Schiller tilted towards the second view. He averred that he was “a Jew, but not Jewish”.

Schiller was born in Oxford, the second of four children of Judith (nee Bennett), a teacher, and Klaus Schiller, a gastroenterologist whose family had emigrated from Austria to Britain in 1938. When Klaus was appointed a consultant at St Peter’s hospital, Chertsey, the Schillers moved to Surrey.

Adrian was educated at Kingston grammar school and Charterhouse, in Godalming, Surrey, where he pursued a busy life in stage productions. Instead of drama school, he took a good degree in philosophy (after switching from architecture) at University College London, although he always self-deprecatingly said that he majored in “plays and partying”.

His early television career encompassed series such as Prime Suspect, A Touch of Frost, Judge John Deed and much else, through to the first series of Endeavour in 2013. He also popped up in the Channel 4 series The Devil’s Whore (2008) set in the English civil war, and the Doctor Who story strand The Doctor’s Wife in 2011.

One of his most effective cameos on screen was as the barman in a striking government-sponsored advert in the anti-drink-driving campaign in 2007. He leaned deep into the camera with a series of non-equivocal questions to a bemused, unimpressed young glass-holding customer who may or may not have grasped the seriousness of the interrogation.

But he always returned to the theatre, seeking out the most demanding roles with companies who would accommodate him. He gave an almost ideal Cassius, wirily intellectual while bubbling passionately underneath, said Michael Billington, for David Farr’s 2005 RSC touring version of Julius Caesar. In the title role of Tartuffe at the Watermill, Newbury, in 2006, he was cool and venomous, as well as understated, and clearly the star of the show.

And for Stephen Unwin’s English Touring Theatre in 2007, he rebooted the remorseless villain, De Flores, in Middleton and Rowley’s Jacobean shocker, The Changeling. He was more than notable, too, opposite Sher’s Sigmund Freud, as a vividly hilarious Salvador Dalí, in their great encounter scene in Terry Johnson’s Hysteria at the Hampstead theatre, revived there in 2013, 20 years after its Royal Court premiere.

His feature film credits were not extensive, but in 2014 he was well cast as the sardonic high priest Caiaphas in Son of God, Christopher Spencer’s biblical epic. In Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette (2015), scripted by Abi Morgan, he was an imposing Lloyd George, coming round to the persuasion of the militant vote-seeking women led by Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst and Carey Mulligan as a fictional worker fuelled by the excitement of change and protest.

His last movie, yet to be released, is Red Sonja, in which he plays the king of Turan in a remake of the 1985 sword-and-sorcery Marvel Comics fantasy.

Back on stage in 2023, he returned to questions of Jewish identity and survival in three short new plays at the Soho theatre and a more substantial Holocaust drama, The White Factory by Dmitry Glukhovsky, at the sparky new Marylebone theatre (formerly the Steiner Hall), in which he was a powerful, wise presence in the story of a survivor of the Łódź ghetto in Poland, played by Mark Quartley, adapting to American life in the Brooklyn of the 60s.

At the time of his death, Schiller – who was also a skilled sculptor and guitarist – had just returned from Sydney and the triumphant international tour of The Lehman Trilogy, directed by Sam Mendes, and had been looking forward to the next leg of the tour in San Francisco.

He is survived by his partner, Milena Wlodkowska, a laboratory support technician, and their son, Gabriel, and by his sister, Ginny, and brothers, Nick and Ben.

🔔 Adrian Townsend Schiller, actor, born 21 February 1964; died 3 April 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[movies-to-add-to-your-tbw]

Title: Shakespeare in Love

Rating: R

Director: John Madden

Cast: Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson, Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Simon Callow, Steven Beard, Jim Carter, Rupert Everett, Martin Clunes, Tim McMullan, Joe Roberts, Antony Sher, Georgie Glen

Release year: 1998

Genres: romance, comedy, history

Blurb: Young Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter, before it's even written. When a lovely noblewoman auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love, and his play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship progresses, Shakespeare's comedy soon transforms into a tragedy.

[shakespearenews]

Every time an able-bodied actor plays Richard, that’s one less role available for a disabled actor. Since disabled actors are less likely to be cast in roles for able-bodied characters, employment opportunities are limited. This dynamic has the look and feel of structural discrimination on the basis of disability, which laws and standards since the 1990s have sought to curb. In the main, having disabled actors play Richard III isn’t about offering a radically new interpretation of the play or even a better, more realistic performance; it’s about enhancing the visibility and status of disabled actors in the hopes that they will secure more roles, including roles for characters that don’t have disability as a centerpiece. The political goal of disabled actors is to bring the way the world looks and feels onstage closer into line with reality. This means having disabled actors portraying characters in stories about disability, as well as disabled actors playing characters in stories having nothing to do with disability.