Jim LeBrecht

Noah Taylor

Mark Mahan

Above:

Jim LeBrecht is interviewed via Zoom during his Thursday keynote at the 2022 SETC Convention in Memphis, TN.

Inclusivity, Not Just Accessibility

Jby Johannah Maynard Edwards James “Jim” LeBrecht(he/him) joined the 2022 SETC Convention virtually as the Thursday keynote, discussing his twin theatrical passions – disability advocacy and sound design – in an interview conducted by sound designer Benjamin G. Stickels. LeBrecht touched on how he came to a life in the theatre, which, in turn, led to a career in film, which led to the award-winning documentary Crip Camp, which he co-directed and co-produced with Nicole Newnham, and how all these things are interwoven with his disability. LeBrecht had this advice for attendees, which became a theme throughout his enlightening and engaging keynote: “I think that for a lot of us in our careers, especially when you’ve been around for a while, you do have these moments where things just happen to fall into place.”

The importance of respect

LeBrecht was born in 1956 in New York with spina bifida. When he was 14, he began attending Camp Jened in the Catskill Mountains. Jened was a place where disabled teens and young adults could be themselves. The seeds of the disability rights movement were sown as these campers and counselors moved through their lives. LeBrecht, along with many other Camp Jened alums, made his way to California, attending the University of California San Diego, where he got involved in the theatre department and helped found the Disabled Student Union.

From there, LeBrecht became the resident sound designer at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, thanks in part to a recommendation from his friend Paul Dixon.

“When I was up for the job,” he said, “the managing director [Mitzi Sales] said to Paul, ‘You know, Paul, this is not a very accessible facility … and he can’t walk.’ He [Paul] said, ‘Mitzi, he’s the best damn sound designer I know.’”

LeBrecht adds with a laugh, “And as Paul told me later, he said, ‘Jim, you were the only sound designer I knew.’ ”

LeBrecht shared a bit about what it was like to be a wheelchair user in a theatre not designed with accessibility in mind. Coming into his career in the theatre in the time before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), LeBrecht found himself climbing and crawling around inaccessible spaces – there’s footage of Jim doing this at Berkeley Rep in Crip Camp. Fortunately for LeBrecht, he had plenty of practice navigating stairs and other inaccessible spaces as a result of growing up in his family’s split-level home. Indeed, sometimes things just fall into place.

Throughout the keynote, LeBrecht came back to the concept of respect. He noted striking similarities in how sound designers and members of the disability community are not met with the same amount of respect as others in the theatre industry.

LeBrecht, quite literally, wrote the book on sound design. Sound and Music for the Theatre, co-written with Deena Kaye, is in its fourth edition and yet, he recalls, “I’ve had a director who looked at me like I was from Mars when I was talking about just kind

Campers and counselors are shown circa 1971 at Camp Jened. LeBrecht’s experiences there helped inspire the award-winning film Crip Camp.

JIM LEBRECHT: Bio and Career Highlights

EDUCATION:

BA, Drama, University of California, San Diego

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

Resident sound designer, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 10 years Founder, Berkeley Sound Artists Co-author, Sound and Music for the Theatre: The Art and Technique of Design Co-director, Crip Camp

SELECTED FILM/TV SOUND CREDITS:

Minding the Gap, The Waiting Room, Battlefield Earth, Pitch Black, The Island President, The Kill Team, Audrie & Daisy

AWARDS FOR CRIP CAMP:

Nominee, Academy Award, Best Documentary Feature; Winner, Independent Spirit Award, Best Documentary; Audience Award Winner, Sundance Film Festival, Documentary; Winner, Zeno Mountain Award, Miami Film Festival; Winner, Media Access Awards, Documentary; Winner, Best Feature, International Documentary Association

ADVOCACY:

Founding member, FWD-DOC: Documentary Filmmakers with Disabilities; board member, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund; early member, Disabled In Action

More Info: cripcamp.com and berkeleysoundartists.com

of a simple sound design idea.”

Another director early in his career remarked, “If I’d understood what you could do, I’d ask for a lot more.”

In 1996, LeBrecht went on to found Berkeley Sound Artists, an audio postproduction house, and he currently has 187 sound credits in film. He gave the audience plenty to ponder on what parity for sound designers can look like, such as considering whether sound designers are being given equal tech time and quality tech time to do the work they need to do. What are directors, stage managers and producers doing to continue understanding the work of the sound designer?

Accessibility is not inclusivity

If sound designers historically haven’t received the respect they’ve deserved, theatre workers and patrons with disabilities really haven’t. LeBrecht addressed these inequities emphatically, noting that inclusiveness goes beyond basic accessibility.

“The ADA is not a ceiling – it’s a floor,” he said. “It’s not just about wheelchair access and bathrooms. And, speaking of wheelchair access, you know, it’s important that the seating for people with disabilities is inclusive seating. It’s not good enough to have something on the front row. It’s not good enough to have something on the back row. You want your audience members to come and to be able to sit in good seats in the house. Well, where should we put the wheelchair seating in our new theatre that we’re planning? Where would you want to sit? Where do you put your critic? I want those seats available to me. I want to be able to take my wife out and that we’re not sitting in a substandard seat – so inclusive seating, which puts you in a lot of different locations, also doesn’t ghettoize us to one area. So, those are things that still can be better. I still see certain spaces built that are really not taking the intent of the ADA to heart there.”

LeBrecht described clearly how something can be accessible without actually being inclusive. Theatre is a field of endless creativity and more of that spirit must be infused into how we design, implement and fully embrace true inclusion within our spaces.

Visibility for 25% of the population

“I relate to my disability culturally” was one of the first statements LeBrecht shared with the convention audience, creating a distinct framework for understanding his lived experiences. This simple statement also acts as an invitation to remove one’s own preconceptions and stigma around disability and to understand that “disabled” is a valued identity to many.

LeBrecht reminded the audience that 25% of the U.S. population has a disability, which means that many people in audiences have disabilities and everyone’s lives are full of many people with disabilities. Disability is everywhere … so why does it ever feel otherwise to some?

“Our allies in the entertainment indus-

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try need to really improve employment,” LeBrecht suggests. “We are 25% of the population, but we’re about less than 2% of people who are working in Hollywood. And part of that is that people don’t want to identify because they’re worried that the stigma of disability is going to kill their careers. Part of it is simply people haven’t really, in the past, embraced disability as a group that needs to be included in DEI.”

What we learn through films like Crip Camp – which tells the story of Camp Jened, the summer camp for disabled teens and adults that LeBrecht attended and how it motivated many campers and staff to become disabled rights activists – and through CODA – a film about a Deaf family, which recently won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, along with a Best Supporting Actor win for Deaf actor Troy Kotsur – is that, emphatically, representation matters.

When we increase the employment of people with disabilities in arts and entertainment, more stories centering disability will get told. When more disability stories get told, we’ll have visibility that looks more like the 25% of the population. When all of these things happen, maybe, just maybe, artists like Jim LeBrecht will, indeed, receive the respect they deserve.

Another reason it is imperative that disabled voices are driving the narratives goes back to disability culture and disability rights.

“Certainly, back in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, what some people learned about disability was simply by what they saw on the Jerry Lewis Telethon every Labor Day for muscular dystrophy,” LeBrecht said. “What they were being told to try to raise money was for these poor, pitiful people, they’re stuck in their mental prisons and, you know, please give because that’s the only way that’s going to really help ‘Jerry’s kids.’ Well, it was incredibly damaging to the perception of who we are. Things have changed now, to a good extent.”

There’s an important saying in the disability community, “Nothing About Us Without Us,” which makes for an excellent rule-of-thumb for depicting the stories of disabled people. It’s up to each of us to advocate in allyship, to look around our theatre spaces and take stock of who is in the room and to speak up when representation is lacking.

More leaders with disabilities

During the Q&A period, an audience member asked LeBrecht for his opinion on what organizations, institutions and allies need to know or do to help the disability community.

“It’s a great question,” LeBrecht said. “And I would say that recognizing, you know, do I have somebody in senior management in my theatre that has a disability? Who are, and how informed are, the people that are deciding what the season’s going to be about? How can we support playwrights and directors and designers with disabilities? … If we’re [artists with disabilities] not there, it’s not because there’s no one available. It’s because you haven’t found them. Because they are out there. You need to take an initiative to really find these people.”

The ecosystem of a theatre institution relies on its people – the people who make up the staff, creative and production teams, volunteer corps and audience. That makes us all stakeholders, to one extent or another, in the institution. Who among us is willing to challenge the institution with these questions? Who among us is willing to ask: Where are the disabled leaders, decisionmakers, and artists here? And, if we find the answer unsatisfactory, are we willing to divest from these organizations? That’s allyship, and as LeBrecht said, “allies are accepted. We really need them; we all need to be the allies.”

One resource for those who would like to help bring about change is the advocacy group FWD-DOC, co-founded by LeBrecht, which is working to increase the visibility of, support for and access to opportunities, networks, and employment for Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse filmmakers. On their website, FWD-DOC.org, they

have assembled a comprehensive suite of toolkits and resources, and an engagement pack designed to increase accessibility in documentary film. Many pieces of information also apply to accessibility in theatre.

There also are many theatres where you can find accessibility and inclusion at the forefront. One example that LeBrecht cited is Phamaly Theatre Company of Denver, CO, whose mission is to be a creative home for artists with disabilities.

In addition to noting changes needed in theatres, LeBrecht recommended that SETC and similar organizations hire dedicated accessibility coordinators for events like the SETC Convention, stating, “I think it’s very important for a conference to be as explicit as possible about access and what you’re doing to support people who are Deaf or hard of hearing or folks with other disabilities and to really have someone dedicated to looking at access.”

An accessibility coordinator would be tasked with looking at the convention as a whole and at all of the event details to be sure that all of the potential access needs of participants are addressed, then to be sure that all of this is communicated to all participants, and finally, that they know who to go to in order to ask for a specific accommodation that will enable them to fully participate. Some examples LeBrecht cited include appropriately enlarged, high-contrast materials for people with low vision; affordable transportation for people with mobility disabilities; captioning and sign language interpretation options for Deaf and hard of hearing participants; and, of course, inclusive seating.

In addition to a sub-par, inequitable experience and the feeling of being othered and discriminated against in large conference settings, disabled people are often forced to pay what’s known as the “disability tax.” This refers to the extra expenses disabled people often must incur in order to participate. These expenses include increased costs and inconveniences for lodging, ground transport and meal options. Additionally, some disabled conference-goers incur costs if they need a travel assistant or if interpreters aren’t provided by the conference.

It’s no wonder that being a person in the arts with a disability almost demands you become an activist. Luckily for today’s upand-coming disabled artists, Jim LeBrecht forged a path and created an example to follow, demonstrating how excellence in your field and fighting for civil rights for disabled people can come together.

Taking disability films to a new level

A few years ago, LeBrecht set out to share his path and that of others in the disability rights movement in the compelling documentary film Crip Camp, which he and Newnham worked together to create. The film is available on Netflix.

“I have a history, of 25 years at least, of mixing documentaries, primarily through my company … Berkeley Sound Artists, and I understood the power of documentary film,” he said. “I’ve also been an activist since I was a teenager, and I had been involved with mixing films that had some disability subjects in [them], but I wasn’t seeing one that I felt took it to another level. Rarely were these films told from within the community, but I’ve always wanted to see some more films that would delve into things that no one outside of the community was thinking about.”

Sometimes, these things just come together, and then the world gets to experience a film like Crip Camp and a body of work such as Jim LeBrecht’s.

In one incredibly engaging hour, LeBrecht gave us the road map: disability representation in leadership, someone with real power to be sure accessibility is considered in every way possible, and stories told from within disability communities. All we have to do is commit to these actions. Who’s ready? n

Johannah Maynard Edwards (she/her) is the executive artistic director of the National Women’s Theatre Festival and the founding chair of SETC’s Disability Inclusion Committee.