I’m a playwright.
I’m actually a great many things. I’m a media spokesperson for a political party in the UK. I’m an actor. I’m an immigrant. I’m American. I’m a feminist. I’m an aviation consultant. I’m a small business owner. I’m working on my first novel, a television pilot, and a little play for a very big theatre.
And oh yeah… I have cerebral palsy.
Which is why I’m somewhat disappointed when theatre rags and press releases go out describing me as a ‘disabled playwright.’
Out of all the possible adjectives you could find to describe my work, my stories, me, theatre still routinely chooses the term ‘disabled playwright’ to promote my work.
On the surface, the term ‘disabled playwright’ seems remarkably woke and cool. It ticks all sort of diversity and inclusion boxes, puts theatres at the top of the pile for grants. I always cringe when I am described as a “disabled playwright.” It’s poor grammar. My writing isn’t disabled. I am. Reading and writing are the only two activities in my life which are not affected by my disability.
I write well and I know it. I am a disabled person. I am not a disabled playwright.
Maybe you just wish I was.
Add to this issue that my disability came as a direct result of someone else’s mistake and you get another level of complexity altogether. To call me a “disabled playwright” always feels like the person who caused my disability also gets to define my work, yet another slap in the face from a man who took away so much already. Why should his actions get to be theatre’s go to adjective in the press?
Like the women I create onstage, I get to define my narrative. My character is determined by what I do and the capacity of what I may become.
But we are living in a society that still believes a story about a disabled person should centre around their condition, rather than their work. An opportunity for equality in the media becomes hijacked by people wanting to been seen as giving “poor cripples a leg up” rather than putting the public’s focus on an up and coming creative force.
Nowhere do we see this more than the world of theatre and the arts. It is no secret that this is an industry that is shamefully lagging when it comes to equality. Part of that is the fault of the public, worried audience members write Shakespeare’s Globe begging the theatre to back out of 50/50 gender blind casting. We roll our eyes when we hear someone complaining about a person of colour in a production of Checkov. It’s easy to feel self righteous and wish things were different.
And yet, bringing diversity solely into the spotlight, focusing on their disability rather than the very human stories they tell, setting a production up as “special” has a profound affect on ticket sales. I write for a mainstream audience about universally human questions regarding free will and power. Some of my characters may happen to have a disability because I see an opportunity for good drama in that experience. But when the press keeps framing me as a ‘disabled playwright’ or a ‘disabled actor’ or a ‘disabled whatever,’ you are insisting on peddling a narrative limits my potential in exchange for you getting to have a good story on diversity. Audience members don’t want to pay money to see the work of a ‘disabled playwright.’
Given the stories we perpetuate about disability in our society, I can’t say I blame them.
It it an old writing adage from Strunk and White that keeps burrowing its way into my brain whenever I’m at a keyboard: Omit needless words.
I am a playwright. Full stop.
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