PERFORMING DISABILITY To help you and your cast better understand the character of Crutchie, and the role of disability within Newsies, we asked Gregg Mozgala to share his experience as an actor and writer with a disability. Gregg is the founding artistic director of The Apothetae, a theater company dedicated to the production of works that explore and illuminate the “Disabled Experience,” and in 2016 Gregg Mozgala he was named a Kennedy Citizen Artist Fellow by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Below are his thoughts. You are being tasked with presenting a production of a beloved musical, and I’ve been asked by our mutual friends at Disney Theatrical Productions to offer you some knowledge and observations on “performing disability” in regard to the character of Crutchie. I’ll give you some background on disability and its representation in film and theater for context, and discuss that representation’s relevance to the material, as well as share some insight and advice based on my own experience as a disabled actor and producer. My hope is that you’ll come away with various options at your disposal, and that you’ll feel confident discussing and exploring issues surrounding disability during the rehearsal process.
Disability in Film & Theater To better understand how Crutchie fits into the larger landscape of disability representation in theater and other media, it’s important to figure out where we are now. The disabled community is the largest minority group in the country, but it is the most underrepresented in the media, which has led to an ongoing conversation in the disabled community about how people with disabilities are portrayed onstage and in other media. The following charts and statistics from the 2017 study, “Inequality in 900 Popular Films,” offer a clearer picture of where we are now with representation. (Also noteworthy: None of these disabled roles depicted a member from the L.G.B.T.Q. community or an underrepresented racial/ethnic group.) Historically, these roles have been performed almost solely by actors without disabilities, though we are starting to see a change in this trend. (Stay tuned for more!) Since the first
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Newsies Production Handbook
1 in 5 U.S. Citizens is Disabled 67.7% 32.3%
Men with Disabilities
2.7% of all speaking characters were depicted with a disability
Women with Disabilities
64.5%
PHYSICAL
31.5%
MENTAL
21.8%
COMMUNICATIVE
ceremony in 1929, a number of Academy Award® acting winners and nominees played characters with disabilities, but only two of those actors identified as disabled (Marlee Matlin, 1987 Best Actress in a Leading Role winner for Children of a Lesser God; and Harold Russell, 1947 Best Actor in a Supporting Role winner for The Best Years of Our Lives). The majority of Oscar®-nominated roles are depicted by non-disabled actors, like Eddie Redmayne’s 2015 Oscar® win for his portrayal of Dr. Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and Sean Penn and Salma Hayek’s titular, nominated roles in I Am Sam (2002) and Frida (2003), respectively. Broadway has a similar history of featuring non-disabled actors who were lauded for portraying characters with disabilities: Celia Keenan-Bolger (The Glass Menagerie, 2014) and Bradley Cooper (The Elephant Man, 2015) are just two recent examples of Tony Award® nominees. Lately, though, Broadway and Off-Broadway productions have begun to cast more actors with disabilities. The 2017 revival of The Glass Menagerie, for example, featured Madison Ferris (as Laura Wingfield), the first actor in a wheelchair