Letter to American Theatre magazine
I sent the following letter to the Editor of American Theatre magazine. While it might not at first seem to have to do with disability matters, I have added here some commentary following the letter to make the connection. To the Editor: Thank you for including Oskar Eustis’s essay on the simultaneous birth of theatre and democracy along with Pamela Renner’s insightful article on the theatre project at Sing Sing Prison in your January 2007 issue. They are complementary statements.
Eustis notes that the transition from storytelling, with its singular authorial voice, to dialogue marked the birth of theatre, and with it an exponential increase in the empathy of audience members with multiple characters and points of view. “That act - that empathic leap of imagination - is the democratic act.”
Renner, in “Oedipus at Sing Sing”, demonstrates how participation as players and audience members unlocks empathy and concern for others in men incarcerated in a maximum security prison. Theatre projects in prisons can reduce isolation, fuel optimism, and prepare the incarcerated for reentry into the community and participation in the democratic state (to the extent that state laws and practices allow such enfranchisement for ex-prisoners).
As if in dialogue, Eustis states: “The stage is a fantastic place for accepting people into the story of civilization,” and Clarence Maclin, the actor who plays Oedipus in the Sing Sing production of Oedipus Rex comments: “…in that connectedness (between audience and cast) is where we find our similarities, our parallels.”
Simi Linton
Disability Culture Watch postscript: The concepts of “incarceration” and “enfranchisement” both need to be explored through the lens of disabled people’s experience. Many disabled people are locked up in nursing homes and other types of institutions, often when there is no medical necessity for them to be there. That isolation from the community, coupled with inadequate public transportation, has a direct effect on disabled people’s capacity to participate in the democratic process - whether in grass roots organizing, voting, campaigning for candidates or in any other way actively engaging in the fundamental rights of citizenship. Further, many poling places are inaccessible to people with a wide range of disabilities - and the standard response that one can use an absentee ballot is a compromise that we should not be forced to make.
I have written before, and surely will write more, about the absence of disabled people in the creation of theatre, and the very few authentic and interesting portrayals of disabled people on stage (and screen). Most portrayals do more to engender sympathy, rather than empathy and identification.
