Thank you for attending ILLUMINATE: Six Plays by Deaf and
Disabled Playwrights. Whether you come as an avid consumer
of play readings and plays in development, or if you are
drawn to this unique narrative lens, we hope you will fi nd an
honest and inviting place to learn about our shared and common
human experience.
The choice for highlighting Deaf and disabled playwrights is
quite intentional: we want to shape future expectations of
artists and audiences to engage in narrative forms that provide
the most humanizing perspectives. Stories that center
on the lives of disabled and Deaf characters are not new to
us, but they have been created primarily to reinforce ableist
standards of beauty, ability and conformity. Human diff erence
has been stared at, exploited, mythologized, moralized and
erased by popular culture. These plays provide refreshing insights
and unique theatri cal conventions to re-imagine our
relationships and our world.
These intrepid playwrights hail from the United States, Canada
and the United Kingdom. They do not all center on stories
of disabled or Deaf characters, and some can be cast authentically
entirely with actors who identify as able-bodied. But
the voices and signs are clear: “Not about us without us.” If
we are going to create a theatrical and cultural community
that is truly inclusive, this program is one way to start this
complicated, but deeply calconventions to re-imagine our relationships
and our world.