There Needs to be a Wheelchair User on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

Depicting the unique experience of a disabled student in high school theater.

Tim Federle’s show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series is the most accurate depiction of high school theater I’ve ever seen. The characters look and act like high schoolers, and most of the conflicts that arise are ones that I remember from my own high school theater days.

The characters practically live in the theater, to the point that those with complicated home lives admit to using theater as an excuse to stay at school. Jealousy over casting causes rivalries, yet everyone puts that aside for a drama club party. Every character is basically a giant theater dork, but some are better at hiding it.

The characters are all familiar to me as well. There’s the kid who finally gets a big role, and no one is jealous because he’s genuinely that nice (Seb). The kid who’s the biggest theater nerd but can’t get out of the chorus (Nini). The kid who’s probably the most talented but everyone forgets that because they don’t brag about it (Ashlyn). The rich kid who feels entitled to the lead (EJ). The crew member everyone keeps trying to get to audition because they have an amazing voice (Kourtney). The kid who’s basically a director because they’re besties with the teacher (Carlos). The new kid who makes everyone step up their game (Gina). And of course, the kids who somehow manage to fall backward into the roles of lead and integral crew member (Ricky and Big Red, respectively).

Each of these characters are more than what they first seem, and the writers craft these stories with a diversity that seems to come naturally.

One blind spot that I feel the show has, however, is disability. They’ve touched on mental health a bit through Kourtney’s anxiety and Ricky’s fears of abandonment, but physical disability hasn’t been addressed. I think this is a shame, as there’s so much story potential in a disabled student in high school theater.

Nothing in high school theater operates with a wheelchair in mind. It’s a constant process of scheming up various loopholes and workarounds to get around the fact that no one actually cares about accessibility.

It was often hard for my friends to help me get in and out of costume (and god knows the directors weren’t going to help), so dresses were often cut up the back and put on me like a backward jacket. This worked well for costume changes, but the velcro used to fasten them didn’t often hold. I lost all or part of a costume on stage so many times that I just started wearing a complete outfit under my costumes, just in case.

Backstage can be pretty chaotic, and a wheelchair (or any mobility aid) just adds to the chaos. During scene transitions I was tripped over, bumped into, kicked, whacked by props/set pieces, and scratched by a dog (Annie) at one time or another.

Eventually, our stage manager got tired of the chaos and decided to measure my chair. He taped out a little box for me to sit in, and he made a walkway that was wide enough for my chair that nothing could be in. I’m told this practice is still alive and well, and I’ve become a bit of an urban legend because of it (though I doubt my disability is handled well when they tell the story, haha).

Choreography was…interesting. Between my disability-related lack of coordination and my completely unrelated lack of rhythm, I was a bit of a thorn in the side of our poor choreographers. I, however, loved getting to do choreo, so we sometimes had to get creative.

My favorite way our student choreographer ever utilized me was in our production of Moby Dick: The Musical (we don’t have time to get into my school’s questionable show choices). During a tap dance number, I had a featured part, and I tapped on my tray with the shoes I was wearing on my hands. I loved getting to do this number, and it was one of the best experiences I had in that department.

My directors could be frustrating whenever we did a play set in the past, which in high school theater is pretty much every play. They had issues with my wheelchair being so obviously inconsistent with the time period, making them hesitant to cast me. They even forcing me to use a period accurate chair for a 1940s era play.

Said chair was bought for the kid who played Roosevelt when we did Annie. It did not fit.

Spring for us meant competition season. Our state held a one act play competition with many levels to advance through, which meant many field trips. My teacher typically drove our bus, but my presence meant we also needed a special education bus.

Oh boy.

When my teacher first gave our campus head of special education the dates we needed a bus for, she was told that was too many and that she had to pick one. My teacher explained that you kind of need everyone to put a play on, and then spent an hour arguing with various personnel about the cost of the bus versus the annoyance of dealing with her.

Something always went wrong with transportation. The bus would be late, the bus wouldn’t work, they never actually scheduled a bus. I’ve written about one of these field trip misadventures previously.

Incidents like these made me acutely aware of how much my mere presence could be an inconvenience to the people I wanted to be friends with. Often it was a balancing act between wanting to be included and not wanting to inconvenience or annoy others.

If the drama club is holding an event that everyone’s excited about in an inaccessible location, do I demand the event be moved and take it away from everyone? If everyone decides halfway through a drama club party to go upstairs and play a video game while I stay downstairs by myself, do I demand they stop and come back? Do I hope they get bored and come back?

It was difficult to balance self-advocacy with my adolescent desire for friendship. It was, I believe, for this reason that I didn’t have many friends in my department.

Federle and the show’s other writers have shown a big commitment to diversity in this show. I hope they continue to write complex, non-cliché stories for the queer and POC characters on their show. Ashlyn’s journey of figuring out her sexuality felt more real than any other I’ve seen, and I’ve never seen a queer relationship that made me as happy as that of Carlos and Seb. The episode with Carlos’ quinceañero made me cry happy tears.

However, I think this show is missing a huge opportunity when it comes to representation of wheelchair/mobility aid users. This is such a unique, oddly specific experience, and the dramatic potential is endless.

Tim Federle, please consider this for a future season. One needs only to look to Ali Stroker’s recent Tony award, the casting of Marissa Bode in the upcoming Wicked films, and the existence of the Rollettes dance team to see the plethora of disabled talent out there.

Admittedly, part of my desire for these kinds of characters is self-serving. If more well-written disabled characters appear in shows, maybe people will start to accept these characters. Maybe writers like me will finally be allowed to tell our own stories.

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