Representation in Theater & Why I Won’t Stop Writing Disabled Characters

In my senior year of high school, I decided to apply to the University of Houston’s playwriting program. I had been in love with theater all my life, but I never considered becoming a playwright until that year. I always wanted to pursue a career in theater, but I had no illusions about how welcome someone like me was in the industry. Throughout high school, I was constantly overlooked for lead and supporting roles, and I was frequently assured that these decisions had nothing to do with my acting abilities. The reasoning I was usually given was that my wheelchair wouldn’t work with the set, costume, amount of space, etc., or that it would be too hard to incorporate my wheelchair into the director’s vision. High school theater taught me many things, but one lesson stuck with me more than any other: disabled people are not welcome in theater.

Anytime I mentioned wanting to pursue theater as a career, people told me there weren’t roles for someone like me to play, at least not enough to support a whole career. And you know what? They were right. To understand the stunningly bleak career outlooks of disabled actors, one simply has to look at the mainstream media. Disabled characters, especially young powerchair users like myself, are in very short supply on major television networks. When disabled characters do exist, they are typically played by abled actors. With no disabled people to collaborate with on these characters, it’s not surprising that these characters also tend to be very poorly written. Why be accurate when you can make money with minimal effort?

Between the bleak reality of Hollywood casting and my own experience in high school, I knew a career as an actress wasn’t likely to work out. I decided to pursue a career as a playwright/screenwriter instead. I thought that if there were no disabled roles for me to play, I would create roles for the next generation of disabled actors. Once I found out that there was a program in my hometown where I could study playwriting I was like “okay, let’s do this.”

To apply for this program, I had to submit a portfolio of my writing. The three requirements for this portfolio were a short play, an academic essay, and any creative writing sample. I looked through all my essays from my English class and decided that my argumentative essay on how inspiration porn (using disabled people existing as inspiration for abled people) negatively affects how disabled people are viewed in society. I had been much more passionate about this topic than most of my other essays, and it showed in the writing.

Next I needed to decide what I would submit for my short play. I had a small collection of short plays and scenes that I had written, but most of them were half-baked ideas that I had hardly looked at since writing. I decided to submit a 10 minute play I’d written involving a dream sequence. The script was rough, but it was the most interesting concept that I had. I hoped that submitting a non-realism play would show potential and that I was willing to experiment with my writing.

The play centered around a teenage wheelchair user who was struggling in a school where she’s the only person in a wheelchair. Any accommodations that could help her are deemed too costly because they would only benefit one person. She becomes frustrated and wishes she didn’t have to deal with her wheelchair and inaccessibility at school. She then has a dream where everyone but her uses a wheelchair. She once again faces inaccessibility in a world that isn’t built for her and refuses to change to accommodate just one person.

The last thing I needed was a creative writing sample. I wanted something that contrasted with my play, so I went with a simple short story about two paraplegic girls entering a dance competition. The concept was simple, but the story delved much deeper into the characters and their development. I wanted to show that I could write compelling characters, not just compelling set-ups.

Before I submitted my portfolio, I asked my high school theater teacher to look it over and give me feedback. I expected to get critiques on how I could polish the individual pieces, but my teacher ended up disliking the whole portfolio. She told me that my pieces didn’t have contrast and made me look like a one trick pony. I didn’t understand what she could possibly be talking about, as I had chosen these pieces specifically for their contrast in both genre and what the pieces showcased about my writing. As I tried to explain this to my teacher, I realized why she thought my pieces had no contrast.

All of my pieces were about disabled people.

I honestly hadn’t realized it while putting the portfolio together, but each piece involved disabled people in a pretty major way. I still didn’t see the problem with this, as my pieces still contrasted one another. My teacher insisted that with this portfolio, the professors in the Playwriting department would assume I could only write about disabled people. When I questioned if this was a bad thing, my teacher asked if I wanted to be a well-rounded writer or not.

I submitted the portfolio anyway. I got into the program, but I still face skepticism every now and then for writing so many disabled characters. This criticism still baffles me. Other playwrights I know write about families, drugs, social media, etc. in nearly all of their plays, but they don’t face the same criticism. This insistence on seeing all plays I write with disabled characters as the same raises a few issues.

• Disability isn’t a genre

Characters don’t make a genre. When I’m fleshing out an idea for a play, I imagine that I’m placing a group of characters into a setting and genre, and the play is what happens when these aspects come together. The characters interact with the genre, but the presence of a certain kind of character doesn’t determine what the genre is.

For example, look at Grey’s Anatomy and Scrubs. Both shows center around doctors in training, but their genre’s couldn’t be any different. Grey’s Anatomy is a melodrama that’s usually one dramatic plot twist away from being a soap opera, and Scrubs is a comedy. The characters have a major trait in common, but the writing is completely different.

This line of thinking also calls into question what people think of disabled people. Do people assume everyone who’s disabled is the same? That writing their stories basically amounts to writing the same story over and over? If this is the reasoning for people’s criticism, maybe we do need more stories about disabled people. Disabled people have a wide range of experiences, and they can’t all fit in one genre.

• The myth that disabled stories aren’t commercially viable

I’ve always been an advocate for disabled characters being played by disabled actors. Because of this belief, many people have cautioned me that I may not be able to get my plays produced due to lack of disabled actor availability. What an incredible catch-22 situation. First I couldn’t be an actor because there were no parts for disabled people, now I can’t write parts for disabled people because there aren’t any disabled actors. Do people really not see the issue with this? You just can’t win.

Almost every time I get told to write fewer disabled characters, the idea of producibility comes up. Playwrights write plays with the intent of putting them onstage. Theater companies don’t have unlimited resources, and I understand that budget concerns often affect decisions on what plays to produce. What I don’t understand is why people assume that stories about disabled people can’t be profitable. Sometimes I hear that plays with disabled characters will cost more to produce. Why? Plays have such a wide variety of production costs, sometimes even between different productions of the same show. Why would every play that involved a disabled character cost more than any other play?

On the other side of the profitability argument, why wouldn’t plays with disabled characters be able to make money? If the past two years of being deeply immersed in the theater world have taught me anything, it’s that people are ready for a change. People want to see something different than the same plays written by the same abled white guys. Theaters are actively seeking new work by diverse playwrights. Why not plays by and about disabled people? That brings me to my last point.

• Many people don’t want to see the stories disabled people want to tell

As much as the landscape of theater is changing, there are a lot of people who just don’t want to see the stories that disabled people want to write. For years upon years, all the stories about disabled people were written by abled people. These stories established and perpetuated harmful stereotypes about disabled people. In these stories, we were the villains, the broken, the monstrous. As time passed, we became the pitiful, the helpless, and the martyrs. When people go see a show about disabled people, they expect these stereotypes. Consciously thought or not, many people aren’t interested in hearing disabled people tell their own stories. They want the inspirational stories that make them feel good, stories that make them feel grateful for what they have because someone else has it worse.

Truly embracing the work of disabled people also means casting disabled actors. Many people see this as a burden because they believe they will have to make many costly accommodations. They might have to, but many of these accommodations should be in place anyway. Also, many of these accommodations intended for disabled actors (wider backstage areas, ramps into theaters, etc.) will also benefit disabled patrons and abled people, making them more beneficial than costly. Additionally, all disabled people are different. Many disabled actors hardly need any accommodations, yet they often get rejected based on an abled director’s assumption of their needs. Not hiring disabled actors because they’re a burden also defeats the purpose of telling disabled stories in the theater.

Theater is known for being the home of the marginalized, providing a safe space for people who don’t belong anywhere else. So why has it been so hard for the theater community to accept disabled people? We deserve to tell our own stories. We deserve to be seen. I’m going to keep writing disabled characters, and I’ll find people to play them. Disabled people exist in the theater, and it’s time for us to be seen.