#disabled performers

[black-is-beautiful18]

I'm a white theatre person in a mostly white theatre community and you are spot on with them being lightyears behind - pretty much every theatre company I know of locally will have on their website and also on the audition postings that they 'accept anyone etc' but will continue to cast white/able bodied/skinny near exclusively.

No cuz everyone must be everyone.

Take Wicked for example. The West End is the first to have both a Black Glinda and Elphaba. Broadway has only had a Black woman play Elphaba as a swing, which is just as important, but they have yet to cast a Black performer in any prominent role outside of Brittney Johnson as Glinda a few years ago and Taye Diggs as Fieryo in their early years of being on Broadway despite said character literally being a POC in the books! Nessa Rose is always played by an able bodied performer as if there aren’t disabled performers who are very talented and very capable of playing the character. It makes no sense. It’s ok for a Black man to play the Phantom but it takes literal YEARS for a Black woman, or any woman of color for that matter, to play Christine only for Broadway to end its 20+ year run a freaking year later. Then they say “Well we should be able to play whoever we want” but when you get a Black Juliet, a Black Macbeth, a Desi man playing the Green Knight, a Black woman playing King Edward, etc we get called every slur they can think of because that statement is truly only meant for them. It is an excuse for them to disregard the importance of Black and Brown performers and everyone who works in theatre including the fans. Cuz why do you think you have the right to play TiMoune when we can’t even play a freaking fairy in a Shakespeare play without someone saying it’s unrealistic for us to have the role due to the color of our skin???? We can’t even get proper representation in freaking Hadestown which is a show that prides itself on being “diverse”. The audiences are just as much at fault too. Their racial bias is the exact reason why ticket sales plummet as soon as a Black or Brown performer is casted in a lead role. I can’t even find videos of Yola and Phillip Boykin as Hades and Persephone for god’s sake! Two dark skin and plus size performers! Grammy and Tony award winners! We have to prove ourselves to everyone including directors despite our credentials and it’s sickening.

[pussysidon]

Living with a disability, especially a progressive or dynamic one is so fucking stressful. I don't know whether I'll be able to do things I can do now in a couple of years or even a couple of months. Maybe today I'm up and dancing but tomorrow I can barely leave my bed. I'm already grieving the things I know I won't be able to do in the future and it's so, so so so hard. The worst part is that there's nothing you can do but try to enjoy life right now and hope you can keep doing what you love

[batwynn]

Alt text:

It’s ok to be disabled and happy. Being disabled does not mean you have to constantly suffer.

[thelaurenshippen]

okay, but, like, THAT'S how you do a villain story. in the FIRST scene, you watch him shoot a man in cold blood. the show tells you right away "this man is not a good man".

but then it gets you to sympathize - look at how much the world has stepped on him. look at how terrible the whole of gotham is. and even when he kills more people, does more terrible things, you still root for him. because it's fun to watch someone be terrible to terrible people. you root for sofia too, because if anyone deserves revenge its her, but you're rooting for both of them somehow.

and then the show tells you "when he was a boy he killed his brothers". but even still, you want to see what he'll do. the show is called the penguin, you want to see the penguin rise. when he lets his mother's finger almost get cut off, you pity him. he's a sad, broken thing. how could he be anything but bad? but he loves, so there must be something else there.

but then. but THEN

the show always told you: "this is the devil". but you thought, maybe the devil can make hell a little more bearable for some people. the devil is so often nuanced, sympathetic, complex. maybe he's like that.

you're wrong. there's nothing good within him and YOU rooted for him to succeed. you wanted to watch the destruction. and now you have to live with the consequences of thinking, even for a second, that he could be redeemed.

[grogumaximus]

[icedb1ackcoffee]

to my fellow creatives: never stop making art. art is an act of protest.

[sephospaganplace]

Stop trying to read the Iliad and the Odyssey.

You're struggling to understand them, to focus on them, because you're going about it all wrong.

They're not books . They're epic poems.

They're oraccular tales. They're meant to be told. They're meant to be performed. They always were. Stop trying to read them.

Listen to the audiobooks instead. Find them on your local library app, listen to them while you're walking, find the cds at your local library, listen to them while you're driving, download them, shove them on your phone and listen to them in the night, staring up at the stars.

They're meant to be heard, to be experienced, not read.

[bixels]

So I l’ve been getting into your ko crisis story lately (it all sounds rlly awesome btw) and i was curious - you’ve said in the tags in a previous ask that ash is comphet, so is that gonna play a major role in her character arc/journey in any way?

Yeah, the story basically covers her journey of redefining her identity as a queer Asian-American disabled woman in a sports-entertainment industry, which is a media landscape that specifically targets, exploits, and fetishizes people like her.

[artsyaprilmr]

Sigh 😮‍💨

[treestomeetyou]

i hate the “oh they couldn’t cast a blind actress to play toph because it would be too difficult to accommodate them to film”

like yeah imagine a story about a young disabled person who overcomes challenges associated with their disability in order to become successful despite how people might underestimate them or assume them to be helpless. that has no place in avatar the last airbender.

[ultimate-marysue]

I have this massive AU for the Batfam (and DC in general) that spawned from a very sleep deprived "You can't just gender swap Batman, there are implications" and honest to God, it's the one thing keeping me sane.

[yourdailyqueer]

Tari Ito (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: Born 1951

RIP: 22 September 2021

Ethnicity: Japanese

Occupation: Performance artist, activist

Note 1: She was one of the few out lesbian artists in Japan

Note 2: Had ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

[em-the-nem]

Some of my favorite moments from last night. This song and outfit gave me so much confidence!

[panncakes]

I just think it bears repeating how well sea is doing at convincingly playing a blind man whilst still managing to portray a genuine range of emotions with his face and eyes

[oxymoronicdumbass]

i will call myself autistic and people will think i'm just using it as a silly, chronically online, tiktok-diagnosed-me term, and then they'll spend a little bit more time with me and they're like oh