I work with a fabulous performer who can’t read and struggles with memorization.  He has a great natural singing voice and is always emotionally available in a way that would make master actors jealous.  Completely connected to everything he says and the story he is conveying, he is often so moved by the song or script he is performing he is brought to tears.  His vulnerability is something that cannot be taught but that actors search for all their lives. I have another performer, whose talent lies in reading and memorization, feed him his lines.  He repeats them and while he is familiar with them from much rehearsal you watch as they happen to him live, he lives through them, they are always new.  The call and response of the other actor supporting his comrade in this way is always beautiful.  Not in an infantilizing way but in an aesthetic practice that is rare in theatre.  It allows us to hear the line and watch how it changes the performer that is repeating it all the while being immersed in the dance of support, of two artists building a moment together.  The art becomes layered with the disability aesthetic, rooted in disability theory which values interdependence, working together which radically challenges white supremacist, individualistic, capitalists structures.  In this way Disability theatre illustrates the possibilities of a new world.

“My daughter undergoes some type of transformation…A kind of growth in her performance skill level that is so apparent and astonishing for me to see. Her joy and passion for being there [at Thatz Showbiz] is indescribable”

– Angela