#disabled actor

[thestars-in-her-eyes]

teen girl sees 50yr old English man ONCE and becomes obsessed

[tuttle-did-it]

struggles for disabled people during the WGA/SAF-AFTRA strike

[twigsandhearts]

DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH

Currently, we have 7 canon disabled characters with a range of disabilities, voiced and written by disabled people! Yen (she/her) & Zenith (he/him): Autism Teddy (he/him): Deaf, Chronic Pain, Chronic Fatigue Angel (she/her): Blind Jolly (it/its): ADHD, Chronic Pain, CPTSD Iris (she/her): ADHD Moth (it/he): CPTSD, Anxiety

There is nothing unrealistic about having several disabled characters, no matter how visible their disabilities. Let them exist. Let them be friends. Let them be a part of other minority groups. Give them depth. CREATE MORE!

[wheelzoffun]

Question

Should disabled actors and actresses be allowed to play roles that were not written as disabled characters? Let's say, for example, an actor or actress that uses a wheelchair plays a character that was written as a fully able-bodied person. Is that acceptable?

[whoops-im-obsessed]

UK'sies Crutchie (and why I love him)

In comparison to previous productions, London Newsies took some positive steps in diverse casting. One of these steps was casting a disabled actor to play Crutchie! I love seeing how different people interpret characters and I know a lot of fansies won't be able to see UK'sies so I thought I'd chat a bit about Matthew Duckett's wonderful job of playing Crutchie. *spoilers under the cut*

In 92'sies, Broadway and even tour casts, Crutchie has always been a bit of a lighter character. A brother figure to Jack, his role is to show Jack's caring side as well as to show the consequences of his actions. Pretty well liked, sometimes portrayed as childish (is it only me that remembers #letcrutchiesayfuck?).

In 92'sies he comes across as bumbling comic relief, AKB builds a more sunny, easily lovable, almost cartoonish character, and Andy Richardson's Crutchie is innocent and youthful.

In contrast, Matthew Duckett brings a realness to the character that I'm not sure we've seen before. Duckett has cerebal palsy - and while its none of our business how his disability affects him offstage - on stage its my opinion that his lived experience, combined with the fact that he's on the taller side and seems to be a little older than some of the ensemble (please forgive me if I'm wrong about that 😅) give us this slightly more matured, starker Crutchie.

He isn't a poor cinnamon roll who needs to be helped all the time, he's a valued member of the team who they help when he wants it.

One of the choices I love is when the newsies first find out about the new price. Crutchie's reaction ('we got the right to starve, let's just get our papes and hit the streets while we still can!') Isn't a scared knee-jerk reaction, it's a thought out, sensible response to the situation and lots of newsies agree with him. He's taken more seriously than before, with a depth to his character we were missing.

Duckett also adds some fun backstory to Crutchie; on the rooftop when Jack mentions Santa Fe Crutchie visibly slumps at the realisation of 'you got folks there', before brightening and grinning privately to himself when Jack denies it. He has a rosary around his neck which he takes out on several occasions, when captured, after yelling for Jack he sobs and mumbles 'oh God please help!'

Finally, the physicality of Crutchie is on point and held until the final bows, even though he hops around occasionally, Crutchie carries himself confidently, and Duckett was so smooth in his movement. A lot of work was obviously put into Crutchie's physicality and it pays off.

Only seen it once so far but I'm planning to go back so this may get updated! Happy to answer any questions about the production to best of my ability x

[canon-disabled-characters]

Phillip J. Fry from Futurama has ADD*

[littlegirlwiththeblueribbon]

I’m ecstatic to announce that I’ve gotten my very first role in a stage musical; I’ve just been cast as Jerusha Abbott in a local-ish community theater production of Daddy Long Legs! It’s astounding, really; I auditioned on a whim, having been a fan of this musical and already knowing the part by heart. As a techie, I’ve never cared particularly whether or not I act in my lifetime. I do like acting, and was in a play once. I like singing, but I only sing in private and I’m almost completely self-taught — I was only given a few lessons as a kid by my mother’s friend — who taught herself to sing (I forgot everything she taught me, really). I didn’t realize people would value my singing and acting, and it’s made me feel overjoyed. But it’s also scary!

This musical (adapted from the 1912 Jean Webster novel) only has two characters — mine, and her love interest/the deuteragonist. There’s really no dancing, simple blocking, but a high demand in singing and a lot of spotlight. And, the kiss at the end will literally be my first.

My costar, who I met for a chemistry reading, is 28. Oh my goodness, he is talented and funny and polite, but he’s ten years my senior. And he has so much experience! He’s taken vocal lessons since he was 8… He’s had twenty years of voice lessons! Years of acting experience! He complimented me plenty, and I to him, but I can’t help but feel rather sheepish and greatly intimidated. It’s awkward for sure but surely we’ll end up friends, and we managed to have great chemistry.

I feel proud. Excited. I also feel like an imposter. Of all the other actresses I went up against for the role, I was the youngest and least experienced. Oh, what a tiny, pitiful resume. And… I brought my wheelchair to the audition. I briefly dislcosed I was an ambulatory chair user, and while I don’t let my condition inhibit my talents, I do allow it to shape the heart and strength of my characters. I pulled this out of my ass, as I am not an actor. But in a way it’s the truth. I also mentioned that I auditioned because this role is one that I believe can be made extra charming if from the perspective of a young woman in a wheelchair, especially in a historical period where this fact would greatly limit her opportunities.

At this point, I was over-sharing, but the director ended up liking it: I aced my audition, got called back and went up against two other actresses, and lastly had a chemistry reading and was selected for Jerusha. I just wonder deep down if it’s not because of my ability… and more because of my disability. No matter, this will be such a lovely representation of wheelchair users made casual and normalized as it won’t be brought up in the show (no need). So I think it’s a major win and I’m happy.

Give this show a listen! It’s a cute, PG romance and I enjoy it even as someone that doesn’t care for romance, reads almost zero romance novels and only ever watched cheesy romcoms because my mom loves them. The songs are catchy, the show is light, simple, and unique, and the plot fun to follow. Rehearsals start next week, luckily I’m on winter break soon. The show is in February, Valentine’s Day week!

[domwho11]

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Please go and see my awesome friend Sara's one woman show Neurochatter at the Edinburgh fringe next week. It is absolutely out of this world. Thanks all

[eldritch-ace]

I present some nerdy prudes (oh and Max)

(I really wanted to take a shot at giving them all more than 1-3ish outfits that I think fit their styles)

[a-little-revolution]

It seems like you're a big fan of Warwick Davis, I was wondering if there are any other little people actors you really like, especially women and trans/nb actors?

Hello! Yes I do enjoy Warwick Davis! Willow (1988) remains one of my favourite LP films, and I've really enjoyed his career of fantastical characters.

Like a lot of industries, white men make up a lot of the most famous Little actors (Warwick Davis, Peter Dinklage, Danny Woodburn, Martin Klebba, Verne Troyer), so I'm happy to mention some of my favourites outside that group!

Linda Hunt is a favourite of mine - she's a Hollywood veteran best known for her role in The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) where she was the first actor to win an academy award for playing someone of the opposite sex!! She's been on Broadway, done tv, film, and voice acting! You may know her as Lady Proxima in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).

If you think you don't know Deep Roy, chances are you do! He's been a scale actor in countless award winning films including Star Wars (1980), Star Trek (2009-2016), The Never Ending Story (1984), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and so many more! We owe so many beloved characters to scale actors and people hardly know it - Deep Roy has been responsible for dozens of them, I adore him.

Despite Patty Maloney's vast career in acting, I know her as Lois Addams from The Addams Family (1991)! Before my time she was in a variety of tv shows and films including Star Trek Voyager (1996), Little House on the Prairie (1982), and The Lord of the Rings (1978).

Cara Mailey is a young actress, author, presenter and activist! She's known for her role in Derry Girls (2018) and Read all About It! (2021), as well as her ebook "I Got This" - which speaks on her experience living with Achondroplasia. I wanted to be sure to give her an honourable mention because at only fifteen she's already become an activist for the LP community! I'm excited to see how her career evolves!

Thank you for the ask! Be sure to check these folks out!

[bigbeanbear]

Nimona is also a milestone in western queer animation history because Ballister (South Asian) and Ambrosius (East Asian) are both of Asian descent in the movie, the same as their voice actors. They are a canon gay Asian couple.

[bodhrancomedy]

This is happening way more than is comfortable in my comments right now and I kinda need neurodivergent people (and obviously other disabled communities including my own) to be aware of lateral ableism.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i'm so happy you brought back up the topic of rick's shitty writing of anyone even remotely non white / "white passing"

with that being said, do you think the shitty script he gave to annabeth in the show has to do with him just being deeply uninterested in adapting his story to include characters of color? bc it seems like once rick encounters a character that cannot be easily erased all ethnic or racial identity of to fit them into an usamerican specifically white ass narrative, he gets lost.

i just keep thinking how the only thing that "changed" about annabeth as presented in the show was her race but her plot relevance and her characterization got downgraded severely. meanwhile percy, whiter than before (wheres the mediterranean god look......................................), got half her functions. like i just look at rick in context and i wonder if he just gives so little fuck about characters of color he cant even write a decent character arc for an adaptation of a very established persona

thoughts? thank u!

I wouldn't be surprised if it's Rick (and the writer's room, since it actually seems Rick isn't all that heavily involved if much at all with the script itself based on some interviews) just has internal biases that he refuses to reflect on. It would be a consistent trend with the uptick in offensive writing in the books themselves (see: the troglodytes in general, all the Jewish kids in CHB being in Hermes cabin, etc etc). Rick seems to want to engage with these topics but refuses to actually assess how he's approaching it and his own biases while also overemphasizing his engagement with the topics. It's a kind of big talk/words vs actions type thing to me.

[this got a wee bit long so throwing it under a cut]

I was having a couple of conversations about this topic recently - one being group reading/discussion of WottG and how, allegedly, the slightly different characterizations in that book are inspired by the actors in the show. Annabeth is repeatedly and frequently described as motherly and maternal in the book, plus some other misc characterizations that make you tilt your head and go "Wait, what about Leah made you want to write Annabeth this way?" and concerns about it leaning into stereotypes. (It's also strange, because in the show Sally is MUCH more aggressive and less maternal, and this is painted like it's supposed to be a girlboss thing cause her being too soft and motherly was too weak or something? But now book Annabeth is now being described as all soft and maternal??? What. What is happening.)

Another conversation that i had with my therapist (cause we talk about pjo a lot lol) and later repeated and discussed more with other folks on discord more specifically regarding the show was a lot of discussion about the casting. Particularly casting choices and how the writing either is refusing to take casting into consideration to respectfully approach how things would be changed to avoid problems or are actively changing the script for characters in a way that is potentially if not downright offensive. Clarisse is the number one example i bring up because a lot of people say that the reason a plus sized actress wasn't cast for her was to avoid the "fat bully" trope. The thing is, there is ALSO a POC bully trope that is just as bad if not worse, so if they were actually taking offensive tropes into consideration one would expect them to avoid that too (especially since Percy was cast as a pasty white boy - which just makes it all look worse)? (Also other plus-sized characters like Dionysus and Gabe were also cast as skinny, same with Tyson. So it just seems like they don't want to cast plus-sized actors either.)

But also they're rewriting stuff that actively puts the casting decisions into worse tropes. Like hey, why is Percy (a white guy) the one who knows the "real" versions of all these myths and is expositioning them to Annabeth (a black girl), who in the books is supposed to know more than him? Why does he know better than her for some reason and have to guide her? Why is Percy teaching Annabeth about pop culture and how to be a kid? Not to mention stuff like the show constantly encouraging the viewer to doubt or distrust characters like Grover and Clarisse and Annabeth as red herrings as to who the traitor is. Plus there's no adjustments to stuff from the books like Annabeth initially being somewhat aggressive/antagonistic towards Percy, or Clarisse's aggression and bullying towards Percy to try and circumvent those being bad tropes in the contexts of the casting.

And there's an ongoing trend of characters who are antagonistic towards Percy in the books being divided into two groups: those who continue to be antagonistic towards Percy in the show, or those who are tweaked to suddenly become kinda silly-goofy and significantly less threatening. Gabe, Dionysus, Ares, and Hades are all examples of characters that should be antagonistic towards Percy but are softened SIGNIFICANTLY and played for laughs in the show. Echidna is played as a twist antagonist because she initially because she approaches the kids as very sweet and helpful. And they're all cast as white! Meanwhile other characters like Clarisse, Luke, Zeus, etc, are still antagonistic towards Percy (plus also like Annabeth initially and again, Grover being painted as a major red herring). Plus some new additions like Hermes, Mr. Lin Manuel Miranda himself, being wholly introduced into the plot when he's not supposed to appear until book 2, and all he does is sabotage the quest. Like, it's weird! That's a weird writing decision!!!! I get wanting to get that sweet sweet LMM cameo money, but, why is Hermes an antagonist here???????? he's not even supposed to be here yet!.

We also have stuff like Poseidon (who, like many of the god/major kid pairings so far seems to have been cast to match each other appearance-wise) saving the day for Percy and being this weirdly good dad, versus the books where we get the iconic "I am sorry you were born" line and Percy and Poseidon's tension is part of their arcs. Notably, Poseidon does this by ceding to Zeus, who is actively about to start a war. While Gabe is rewritten to be a total loser, Sally is MUCH more aggressive and her yelling and screaming at young Percy is supposed to be sympathetic for some reason? If Gabe were acting like Sally does in the show, he would actually be significantly more like his book counterpart! The show is making active decisions to paint these characters the way they do!

Admittedly, part of it may just be they got overzealous with their casting (not inherently a bad thing! diverse casting is good!) and then proceeded to not consider how that casting affects the way the characters are perceived. It also doesn't bode well for certain guesses we can make going further into the show - Thalia is very at odds with Percy initially. She's a very aggressive character. They fight a lot! Also Annabeth's description already implies that they're tweaking Thalia's character to be more "tough love" versus the books where she's significantly more of a bleeding heart when she first meets Annabeth. Like, I'm very happy about Thalia's casting, her actress seems amazing, but also I'm VERY concerned with how they're going to approach her character to make sure it doesn't end up wildly offensive. Athena is similar - we can guess based on casting decisions so far that they're going to try and cast Athena as similar in appearance to Annabeth/Leah. The show has already painted Athena has antagonistic and uncaring towards her daughter. If projected trends continue, these things are not gonna be great.

And the show does seem to rarely want to engage with these topics - like the scene with the cop in the train. You can tell what they wanted to address by having Annabeth be the one to confront him. The thing is they were too cowardly to actually have that conversation! They paint the kids as being unreasonable and getting unnecessarily upset when they aren't directly being accused of destroying a room, therein painting the cop as the one in the right in that situation. The implication seems to be a little bit they were going for "Oh, this is Annabeth's hubris getting them into trouble" but. that's such a bad way to do it! That's like the worst way you could have done it! (This is also a trend in books from HoO onwards, more or less - Rick tries to engage with certain topics, often using characters of specific demographics, and then proceeds to do a really bad job of it.)

There are also some aspects that are just like - in the books, Luke being a middle-class blond-haired blue-eyed pretty white boy is relevant! Because the fact that he has privilege from that particularly in how he's perceived is part of how he came to where he is and why he acts the way he does. Percy not having those same privileges, and having aspects like constantly inherently being labeled as a trouble-maker just based on his atypical (neurodivergent) behavior and coming from a lower socioeconomical background play heavily into his character!!! Percy being both a poor and disabled kid (and implied potentially POC) plays DIRECTLY into why he feels so strongly about standing up for other disenfranchised kids (in SoM, explicitly including other disabled kids and kids of color). It directly relates to his experiences and standing up for kids who are like him because he didn't have that, versus Luke whose perceptions and goals are very self-oriented. Now, in the show, we've essentially swapped Percy and Luke's appearances, and that paints a very different narrative. And that's important to acknowledge!

[disbabeled]

Cast 👏 disabled 👏 actors 👏 to 👏 play 👏 disabled 👏 characters

[Plain Text: Cast disabled actors to play disabled characters]

[whoops-im-obsessed]

Matthew Duckett in conversation with Jack Hunter discussing disability and performance in the documentary 'You've Got to be Ballsy: Stories from the Front Line of Cerebral Palsy'

I couldn't fit the whole clip here but he goes on to talk about his view on disability politics and the work of Birds of Paradise (a Scottish disabled-led theatre company) on 'My Left/Right Foot'. It's a great documentary in general and is definitely worth a watch!