Shadow Puppet Storyteller

Something to get It started

When I languish from writing down anything -- I find that I have to push to get going. Write anything! Maybe it goes in the memoir and maybe it does not. But you need Something to get it started again. What does that type of motivation feel like? Toe-stubbing pain that stabs at you the same as urging a spark from a flint in one hard strike.

I should write about something startling. Do I have a memory that expresses a time when I was startled?
Or when I say that I should write something startling, should it be some unexpected facet of me that affects a reader, so that they are startled? Is there anything shocking in my life? Alright I can think of a few things that have occurred, which others would not expect. I think one of my strongest moments of pain and confusion remains the day in college when I was told by a grad student that they wouldn't partner with me on a project because the integration of disabled people into Theater departments was never going to be accepted, first of all by them.

This moment played out in a 1960's era college theater department hallway, near the RTVF offices of our Advisor, Ants Leps. Nothing punctuated the monotony of the walls except wooden doors with metal door knobs and an occasional bulletin board. Forget that a group of students on campus were already creating theater and other artistic work outside of my peer's bubble. I have two friends as part of that group, one majoring and the other minoring in Theater, both with significant ambulatory disabilities.

I wonder if the waiting and seeing me shift got to them -- I usually do not enjoy standing still -- probably I was wandering the hall as we waited for Professor Leps. It was this student's arrogance that struck me -- the logic was: professors wouldn't utilize a training in making Theater more accessible, because they would never consider that viable -- wheelchair users, blind, deaf, any of the un-able on stage or backstage. I do not think I argued long, their mind was made up. I'm still not clear if somehow it was a threat to their grad student standing to possibly be on a losing team. I didn't see much imagination being utilized in their defense. It was a power play and I, characteristically said, "I could do it on my own."

If they had an idea of their own, I do not remember it. I actually am not sure that student completed the semester? I did meet the requirements of my training video; I utilized slide photography and remember being active in the production of Agatha Chjristie's Mousetrap presented in CSUN's Little Theater while I was storyboarding the end result. I can play out some of what I scripted and recorded as narration for that project, yet it seems amateurish in hindsight. It was still the time of the Plea.

By "Plea" I mean this: movies win Oscars and television shows their own accolades when a story involving someone with a disability is portrayed. And except for that moment in 1987 when Marlee Matlin was given an Oscar statue for her performance of Sarah in the movie version "Children of a Lesser God," the performers were able-bodied stars doing a hard thing, an unthinkable thing -- portraying being disabled. At at the same time people with disabilities were trying to work and have families as if the disability didn't matter. When it came to finding work as a performer, it was this constant kind of "plea" that went on. Will you have a storyline with me?

In 2017, I still see inaccurate captions and headlines describing performers in wheelchairs as "wheelchair-bound" and when performers gather at conferences to enlighten the Industry, the news reporters still say performers with disabilities are "pleading" for work.