What does “accessible” really mean? A diverse group of theater artists have the answer.
“It’s not just ramps and handrails,” says Jim Brown, a longtime volunteer with Short Center Repertory, a public outreach program of the Developmental Disabilities Service Organization.
“In this instance, accessible refers to the audience experience, as well as the performers’ experience,” he says. “Getting involved with this has really made me so aware of the ways in which we seldom accommodate people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind and low vision.”
A festival of accessible theater comes to California Stage at 25th and R streets Sept. 13–15, presented by Short Center Rep with funding from Capital Region Creative Corps.
Jim Anderson and Jim Brown
Photo by Linda Smolek
Three companies—InnerVision Theater, Theater V58 and Short Center Rep—created original productions to address impacts of climate change. Performers are developmentally disabled, neurodivergent, blind, low vision, deaf and hard of hearing. The festival reflects their perspectives.
Brown uses his background in public information to publicize the festival and make sure everything runs smoothly. He began volunteering with Short Center Rep to transport blind and low-vision actors to rehearsals for his friend Jim Anderson, who runs the outreach program.
“Rehearsals are in the evening and a lot of these people work and rely on paratransit, which gives you an hour window when they’ll pick you up,” Brown says. “We realized that getting a cast to the same place at the same time was going to require extra effort.”
Brown helped Short Center Rep apply for the Creative Corps grant, giving the program a new outlet for its creative work and compensating participants for the first time.
“Historically, this type of theater relies heavily on volunteers,” says Brown, who ran Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates before retirement.
“This particular season of productions, there’s compensation. That speaks well to the funders to realize it’s important to get at least some compensation to the artists. We have so much art available to us through people who aren’t compensated.”
InnerVision Theater’s production “Eye of the Storm” was developed by actors—all of whom are blind or low vision—using Brazilian theater practitioner Augusto Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed” techniques to examine limitations of emergency-preparedness procedures.
Theater V58’s cabaret-style “Ultimate Impact” examines the climate crisis through original monologues, comedy, poetry, music and film presented in American Sign Language and English. Many of the volunteer sign language interpreters are Sacramento State students.
Short Center Rep will perform “Clowns to the Rescue,” devised by the actors and based on the Lecoq clown technique.
Along with performances, the festival includes rotating screens of filmed recordings of past Short Center Rep productions and a forum on accessible theater.
“The forum is going to be really neat because there haven’t been many occasions where all of these people working with these communities are in the same room and having a public conversation,” Brown says. “It will be of special interest to theater presenters, practitioners, students and those who provide services to the blind, low-vision, deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. We’re really excited about it.”
For information, visit allintheaterfestival.org.
Jessica Laskey can be reached at jessrlaskey@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
