 So on that note, I am so incredibly excited to introduce our first speaker for today, Allie Easton. Allie is an actor, director and disability consultant from Russ Agilis. Allie received her degree in theater arts and psychology from the Rousseau Pacific University, then moved to Italy where she studied deaf theater as a Fulbright scholar. Upon returning to the U.S., Allie worked with the Niles Wooden Theatre Company, the Chance Theatre, Ilhan Valley Laboratory Company, and more. And it is a company member with a few major joint productions. She adapted, produced, and directed an awareness workshop of women and Juliet, an illiterate love story, for the Hollywood French Festival in 2014, and a full version for a few of her joint productions in 2018. Allie now moved to Chicago to pursue her ever-filling acting at a theater school at DePaul University and graduated in June 2022. Here, she was worked as an actor and disability consultant with a theater school, the Gift Theatre, and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre Company. She's an adjunct theater at Roosevelt University, focusing on theater and social justice. As an honest advocate, her mission is to cultivate community, facilitate education, and promote accessibility and inclusivity. Ilhan was one of the first speakers I reached out to and finalized for ITF this year. Her passion for theater and access is so clear in her work and the way she speaks about it. I'd like to welcome Allie Easton. Thanks. So can you all hear me okay? Excellent. Hi, everybody. Good morning. Thank you so much for being here. It is my pleasure to be here with you today. I have my notes here for my own access needs. So maybe I contact maybe on my phone, but I'm not on my phone. My name is Ashna and the entire CESA team for including me in this year's festival. My name is Allie Easton. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am a white woman with shoulder length, light brown curly hair. I'm wearing a teal top, black dress pants, and shiny black boots. I am a disability consultant, actor, director, realtor, adjunct professor, and all around artist entrepreneur originally from Los Angeles now based here in Chicago. I am disabled and I've been doing disability advocacy unofficially for about 20 years and disability consulting more officially for about the last eight years. Just to set some expectations, I'll be sharing information with you all for about the next 30 minutes or so, and then we'll have some time for Q&A at the end. You are welcome to engage at your comfort level both in person and online. A little bit more about me. I was a theatrical child growing up. My siblings, God bless you. My siblings were often a subject to my playwriting character breakback stories and directing when we played Barbies, complete with me giving them line ratings. When I got older and technology developed, I commandeered the family video camera and created elaborate setups for family videos, hoping to be on America's funniest home videos. In elementary and middle school, I formally found my way into the informal art of improv. And then in high school, I was in my very first show, my first scripted show, bye bye birdie, if you can believe that. I did a little drama class that I first started to experiment with ways to make theater more accessible and more inclusive, adding American sign language into monologues and ideating on stories focused on disabled characters. This interest in experimentation continued into my undergrad studies where I did an internship with Deaf West, the premier deaf theater in Los Angeles. At school for my senior thesis, I directed and acted in A Night of Deaf Theater, a series of scenes with hearing and deaf actors using English and American sign language on stage together. So no interpreter in the corner that you have to look back and forth and inevitably miss something. It was all happening together on stage. In 2014 I moved to Italy as a Fulbright scholar to do research on deaf and inclusive theater, which led to the workshop version of Romeo and Juliet with the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2014, and the full production again in 2018. I hold a master's degree in leadership development, recently received my MFA in acting from the theater school at DePaul where I also did work in disability advocacy and consulting. Now that you know a little bit about me, I'd like to go around the room and have everyone share a story. I'm just kidding. But I do look forward to connecting more over this weekend. I have to say when Ashna first reached out to me about participating in this year's festival, number one, I was thrilled. I love that something like this exists and I can't wait to see what happens this weekend and every weekend coming. And I knew immediately what my presentation topic was going to be, talking about disability consulting and theater. The recent push to make theater more inclusive and more accessible is extremely exciting, but the path forward is not always clear. It takes more than simply hiring an ASL interpreter having a ramp or something else to make theater truly accessible to and enjoyable for disabled artists, performers and audiences. Coordinating access needs, providing cultural support, translating scripts to ASL and more, disability consultants are the best assets for a theater trying to be more inclusive and accessible. But what is a disability consultant? What does that job fully entail? When should we bring in a disability consultant and why is that even important? Let's get into it, shall we? So when it comes to theater, we have a lot of people in various different roles that make sure things run smoothly, safely, and most effectively to tell the story at hand. Yes, we have directors and designers and actors and stage managers and all the people that you normally think of most popularly when you think about theater productions. But there's so much more. We have fight choreographers who make sure that the actors are protected by giving them safe choreography, even if it doesn't look safe to the audience. We have voice and dialect coaches who are there to support the vocal health and authenticity of the way the actors speak and sound in their expected accents. We have intimacy coordinators to advocate for informed consent and safety for simulated sexual choreography. And what I'm here to talk about today is that we can have disability consultants and or access and accessibility coordinators to navigate the same levels of respect, safety and consideration when it comes to disabled stories and disabled artists. While not all disabled people should be disability consultants, it is best practice that all disability consultants should be disabled. Just like other roles in production process, disability consultants or accessibility coordinators are experienced in their field and bring an intentional focus on disability support and advocacy. In trying to define what kind of work these consultants or coordinators do, there are many different tasks that can fall under the same umbrella. These tasks may have different job titles, depending on the theater company. Some places call them disability consultants. Some places call them access or accessibility coordinators. Depending on the specifics of the production, the title and responsibilities might even be more specific, like autistic creative consultant or director of American Sign Language. Whatever the particular job title is, I find that these tasks fall mostly into three categories. Number one, work that is educational focused. Number two, work that is accommodation focused. And three, work that is access or accessibility focused. The education work is probably the simplest to define, so we'll start with that. This is typically consulting not tied to a particular production for a theater or more just a general consultation related to disability. A disability consultant could work with theater leadership in reimagining internal policies and practices to make it the institution and its production more inclusive and accessible. This may include workshops or presentations to the board or staff on anything from disability history and basic awareness to specific disability related microaggressions and how to be more inclusive. An education focused disability consultant might work with a production team to offer talk backs or behind the scenes conversations and events for audiences who want to learn more about disability topics from a presentation. An example of that would be something for a theater producing the show called Tribes by Nina Rain. If you're unfamiliar with the show, quick summary. It centers on a young man who's deaf, who's grown up in a home where lip reading and speech are prioritized and assimilation is expected. When he meets a young woman who signs, he begins exploring his own deaf identity and his life changes. An example of how a disability consultant could include educational programming for this production would be to host perhaps a post show discussion with members of the deaf community who can share personal experiences about their own explorations of the deaf community, their deaf identity, language use and preference and how deafness can be celebrated instead of expected to assimilate. Next, as we move into talking about the other two categories of work, I'd like to make a distinction between accommodations and access and specify the difference between the two. Accommodation is reactive. It strives to remove barriers caused by inaccessible design or planning. Access and accessibility on the other hand then are proactive and strive to remove barriers during the design and planning stage of an event program or service. Most theaters in my experience have historically been focused on creating accommodations and less focused on access despite having accessibility and inclusion statements. These accommodations are reactive and most often geared toward audience experience. I want to take a quick side quest here just to say the reason many theaters have focused more on accommodating audiences in my experience is because our theater culture is still learning to think of casting and creative hiring in a more open and inclusive way to open our imaginations in that way. Nowhere in Romeo and Juliet does it say that Juliet is hearing. So why couldn't she be deaf? Why can't eponine have down syndrome? A production does not have to be disability focused for a theater to hire a scenic designer who uses a wheelchair. I'll touch on this more as we discuss work that is accessibility focused, but I thought it was an important side quest to take here too. Jumping back to our discussion on disability consulting work that is accommodation focused. This type of work may include coordinating sensory-friendly performances, ASL interpreted performances, captioned performances, touch tours, large font programs, Braille programs, audio description services, accessible seating, and so much more. Because the audience experience was not designed as accessible from the outset, a disability consultant's work there is in regard to provide and support accommodation. For theaters who do provide this service, these tasks have often fallen to audience relations coordinators, house managers, ushers, certain members of the design team who already have full job descriptions of their own. While these people still may be involved in the implementation of accommodations and services, the work to coordinate these experiences can be greatly benefited by having a dedicated disability consultant as well. Next, when it comes to work that is truly access and accessibility focused, this work tends to be more production specific. And the tasks of a disability consultant or access coordinator here can vary widely. This is where a bulk of my work has been over the years. Most recently I worked with Chicago Shakespeare theater and their production of measure for measure. Robert Schleifer is an incredible deaf actor here in Chicago and I got to work with him. He was cast as the provost in that show. Because of my experience with ASL and Shakespeare, I was brought in to work with Robert on translations to provide cultural support for the team and as an additional resource. If there's a deaf actor in a production, it's highly likely that you're going to want to hire a dazzle or a director of ASL. Since ASL translation is a separate job from acting. That hadn't happened from our production so Robert and I did that together. It is imperative to hire ASL interpreters no matter what, which we did have. I have also been a hybrid educational consultant and access coordinator on a production of She Kills Monsters that script has some fairly problematic disability tropes that cannot be altered or fully remedied. My work there was to educate the cast, crew and team on why the tropes are harmful, how to be better disability allies in the future, and how to advocate for better disability representation in the future while also advising on how to reduce harm in the performance. Additional work that a disability consultant or access coordinator may do could include coming alongside a theater in their season selection process to advise on authentic representation in the scripts being considered. I will take a moment here to clearly state disabled characters should always be played by a disabled actor, ideally as close to the character specific disabilities as possible. A disability consultant can help craft authentic and appropriate casting notices to specify what is needed for a particular character, and moreover they can contribute by networking to find talent that matches the authentic representation needs of a production. As a side note on this, I don't expect every theater to have an awareness of or a connection to individual performers with very specific identities. Perhaps someday, but in the meantime, a disability consultant is often more plugged into the disability community than a particular theater may be, and so they can better leverage their network to find someone who is the right fit. A great example of this is the show The Who's Tommy that script has a character who is deaf and blind. There are disabled actors who are closer match to that character's identity than a sighted hearing and otherwise able to actor, and a disability consultant could be a great asset to a theater and finding someone to authentically cast in that role. Yes, there are deaf blind actors. There are deaf blind actors who do musicals. Just going to say that. And then that disability consultant can then advise on how to create an accessible process for that actor. Access coordinators can advise designers on accessibility and their respective designs before production gets to rehearsal stage. They will likely walk through performance spaces to check accessible routes and appropriate queue lightings ahead of tech. Probably the biggest and perhaps the least obvious job that I have as an accessibility coordinator related to access on a specific production experience is to be a buffer and a problem solver so that the artist or actor who has been hired to do a job can focus solely on the job that they were hired to do and not have to worry about the additional accessibility and advocacy that goes along with simply being disabled in an ableist world. For example, an actor with a mobility disability lets me know that the stairs that are part of the onstage set are inaccessible for them to manage. Instead of using their acting time to go to the stage manager, receive the looks of frustration from the technical director at having to make a change, feeling like a problem or a cause for disruption. I can advocate for the necessary changes that need to happen and take that work off their plate. I can be the bad guy or the problem. They can focus on their job of acting and I can focus on getting their support needs met. Another example. If I had a nickel for every time someone in the world has said, but you don't look disabled, or you're too smart to be disabled, or any other ableist thing based on their own bias and assumptions about what disabled people look like, I would have so many nickels. I would have so many nickels. All these microaggressions innocently intended as though they may be happen in a rehearsal room as well. Again, well intentioned other actors may have questions or things that they're learning or what they want to process. Without speaking for or over someone else who has a different experience than I do. I can be a resource for other cast members designers technicians and anyone else involved in the process to come and ask questions, particular to from to the measure for measure situation with Robert. I answered a lot of questions about how do I tell him something, or how do I sign this word or what's the deal with lip reading. One of these questions I can point back to Robert and support him and speaking for himself, but some of the things I can take on the emotional labor and time to answer so that he just gets to focus on acting. The actor's job is to act to play to learn lines to figure out their character to fulfill their role. My job is to remove distractions from that job. So, when should you bring in a disability consultant. It's never too soon. It is never too soon to bring in a disability consultant want to make your organization more accessible talk to a disability consultant for theaters who are thinking about season selection talk to a disability consultant. If you've hired a disabled director. Please talk to a disability consultant. It's never too soon to make your organization more inclusive more accessible or to unpack bias and unlearn ableism. I hope that it's obvious why a theater would want to bring in a disability consultant, but just in case it's not. We make the process smoother more positive more inclusive safer and more accessible for everyone involved. Our community is vibrant and robust and our theaters should reflect that, especially since accessibility can be easy if it's thought of as included, instead of as an afterthought. So, at this point, I would love to open up the floor to q&a. Does anyone have burning questions, not burning questions just a regular question about disability consulting or about that process. Yes. Yeah, so I have definitely been an actor in a production where we could have really used a disability consultant. I was in a production of Our Lady of 121st Street, which has a character that is referred to with the R slur. It's the only openly disabled person in that rehearsal room. It often fell to me to do the work of educating why that word is not okay, why those attitudes are incorrect. It's interesting to participate in those situations because scripts are stories and characters and stories don't always behave the way we want them to. They are not the best version of ourselves. They are a product of their time, their place, their environment. And there are certainly still people in the world today that use the R word and don't know that they shouldn't, but how we as artists care for those stories matters. And so the emotional labor of that particular production fell to me a lot to talk about hey this isn't okay this is why I think in that scenario it would have been really beneficial. I love my cast from that show and my director and everyone was really wonderful. So this is not a knock on them at all. But I think we could have benefited from having someone other than me to say hey, hey, just raising a little red flag about this thing that answer your question. Yes. Absolutely. So it's a combination, I would say. Clearly, the process would be disability consultant is hired gets to help with the casting process not in choosing the actor but perhaps in language for the casting notice etc etc. In the case with Robert. He actually picked me. He got to be on the interview committee for the access coordinator and so he picked me. So bulk of my work was with him initially to figure out what his needs were and how I could best support those because it's never as a disability consultant or access coordinator it's never about me. It's you are the actor with the job so how can I help you do the best job that you want to do. Primarily with Robert, but then in my time in rehearsals, if other actors or other cast members had questions, I was additionally there to answer their questions as well. I think in an ideal world. We would have a disability consultant presentation as part of design presentations, much like a dramaturg. And then come in and say so in the world of this play. Here's how disability shows up. Here's how this character's disability shows up measure for measure was set in Cuba. So, what does it look like to be a deaf person in Cuba, and to be able to talk about that as well. The experience is a little bit different based on what the theater is looking for and how versed they are in what this should look like, and how much time they a lot. Sometimes we're at the mercy of what they've given me. I think it would be in an ideal world. It's primarily working to support that particular person, but also works to support everyone becoming better allies and less ableist. Yeah. Break breaks. Break breaks. Breaks flexibility. There's a couple different things and some of this depends on what kind of disabilities we're talking about to supportive resources for people who are neurodiverse might be a very specific rehearsal schedule. If we're going to be rehearsing scenes one, two and three, even if we're get out, you know, we're done at 930 rehearsals till 10, we're not going on to scene for because we said we were doing one, two and three tonight and that's what we're doing. So setting expectations and following those is excellent. Breaks. Emphasize enough breaks. Allowing for fidgets and other accessibility tools in the space, allowing folks to get up and move around as they see fit as they need for their bodily needs. Yeah, there's kind of the big ones that I can think of off the top of my head right now. Happy to provide a longer list if you have questions later. Yes. Hi. Thank you so much for your presentation. Yeah. I'm a big fan girl. Have we. Yeah, and I've been in the background. Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah. And you mentioned breaks. Yes. So we're also looking also mentioned. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, again, we're operating in a world that is not built for us. So sometimes in order to be the most accessible version of ourselves, we have to be a little subversive to the rules. I'm, I'm obviously not like I don't have the union book memorized by any means. I don't think there's a rule against more breaks. I think the rule is you have to have this many breaks, and most places take the fewest amount of breaks because they want the most amount of working time. There's no reason you couldn't do more breaks. I think a lot of my work is around. How do we proactively make things accessible from the start. Instead of adjusting to accommodations later, how can we make something the most accessible to the most amount of people from the beginning and breaks is a great way of doing that. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. I think there's probably a couple of different ways I would go about that and it depends sort of on some of the specifics of what the situation is. If the person has not disclosed the disability previously and this is a surprise to everyone, except perhaps them, then everyone's going to be in a reactionary mode no matter what. I think the biggest thing is getting that person the support that they need to be able to move forward whether that's having an understudy step in whether that's allowing them a different choreography to sit on stage more often. If that's adjusting their rehearsal schedule so that they are in the room less often. There's a lot of different ways that you could go about that I think then it becomes more about that person having to advocate for themselves per usual. So really being in conversation with the director and the stage manager and whatever other production folks need to be involved to say okay so we've had this flare up or we've had this situation happen. How do we prevent that from happening again in the future and what can we do to support the needs to make this accessible that answer that question. Yeah. Cool. Please. Great. Thank you. I probably could have repeated them apologies online people organization makes a decision to bring you in. Oh, yeah. Measure for measure with the director was it that makes that artistic decision. Yeah. So it varies depending on the organization measure for measure I went to grad school with someone who works on staff there now. And she knew about my experience with Romeo and Juliet and ASL inclusive theater so when they hired Robert she was like I know exactly who to call. And goodness I am grateful for the people that speak my name into rooms that I'm not in yet. I'm not a person who has done that for me so that's kind of how that situation arose. And general open conversations talking I mean in situations like this where I've now met all of you and whatever rooms you further wander into being able to say oh I learned about disability consulting. You know even, even an assistant director in a room as you're talking about the production or production meeting pre production meeting, an assistant director could say oh, I think we could benefit from an accessibility coordinator for this or even if it's only to bring me in for a five minute conversation as part of a pre production meeting, even that is helpful. It doesn't always have to be hiring from the full span of rehearsal just depends on the show's needs but yeah I mean it could be anybody that speaks that into a room but usually hiring is done by leadership, executive leadership director might advocate for that. So if you bring in a an intimacy coordinator, or a fight choreographer, or a dialect coach, they can know to bring in a disability consultant. Do you budget for a disability coordinator similarly to one of those other types of coordinators you talked about. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Very cool. So following those lines, what do you recommend to the smaller theaters that can't necessarily afford or don't have the resources resources for a disability coordinator but obviously still need one. Yeah, I operate on a sliding scale. So depending on what the budget of the theater company is that determines my rate in conjunction with how much time do you expect to have me on site. Obviously being on site for measure for measure I was there every rehearsal. In part to just be a resource for Robert and in part because we only had interpreters there some of the time. We don't have to talk about that. Yeah. So it's in conjunction with sliding scale based on their budget and how much time I'm expected to be on site. I've done other companies that I've done things for, I've done captioning for folks and so I do that on an hourly basis sliding scale. Yeah, so it definitely varies based on budget of the theater company and hours expected on site. Ashna, do I get what's my time check. How we do. I have some time. So my question is a lot of us in the room are student theater makers and we often don't have the resources or the budget to be able to like bring in a professional disability consultant. So what can we do to kind of account for that in our rehearsal rooms without being able to bring in someone as experienced as you. I'll do it. I'll do it. I mean, I do mean that though like if, if you need me call me because it's important work and particularly for students I think that that's something that I really value. So call me secondary to that is read, get involved, talk to disabled people I love love love love love the book disability visibility. That's a great collection of stories. Get involved, talk to people figure out, learn about access needs, learn about accommodations, learn about accessibility as much as you're able to and ask questions don't be afraid to screw it up because inevitably you're going to screw it up sometimes I have certainly screwed up sometimes and you learn and you do it better next time. But I think the more that you can learn the more that you can read the more that you can be in conversation with disabled people and then call and I'll do it. Yes. Hello, I guess I just wanted to ask like in the situations where like someone does like make a mistake in the process like how do you best remedy that. Oh yeah. Okay, so, um, at least for me in my rehearsal processes I try to introduce community agreements. And one of the community agreements that I often will utilize is the ouch oops policy, which basically means if someone says or does something that hurts someone else. The other party can say ouch. And then the offending party can immediately should immediately say oops, and it is an acknowledgement that harm has been done. I have been harmed. I didn't mean to harm you. Then if we need to have further discussion on what the harm was how to remedy the harm make a fuller apology and so on and so forth we can do that. But the ouch oops is a very non threatening way, usually to acknowledge and start the resolution process when harm has been done. I wanted to just refer back to the previous question. We're sitting at a university that has an incredible amount of resources communication studies. I would offer that I'm not trying to take no please from you but that as you as students begin to configure their productions think about the network that you actually have here. Because then you are growing colleagues that can help our speaker in her work. She can't be in 20,000 theater productions. So part of the struggle I think and the challenge is to grow these positions. And if you're doing it on such a basic level and embryonic level. I think that the learning is interstitial it's intersectional, and you also bring in tech, right. You bring in the school of communications, the school that I graduated from you bring in learning disabilities, you, which you are already doing in many ways but it's formalized. These students will then have internships that are on par with the internships that are at NASA. Yes, the National Science Foundation. Yes. And then I would support what our speakers saying we have to kind of think around, because it's such a huge challenge. Yeah. So the innovation, I think, is what people with disabilities always bring to the table because we have to change everything. Yeah, in order to come into the room. Thank you. Yeah, plus one chuchu to that. Absolutely. Yeah, enough cannot be said for the power of community and network. I, you know, my, I don't have every disability in the book. So if I'm advising on a production that has something where it's not my disability. I don't want to defer to someone who is an expert in that someone with lived experience. So, so building that network and that community is there. I just cannot say enough. My students I, I adjunct teach a class in social justice and theater at Roosevelt University, and the running. They tease me a lot because the answer to my question would always be community. How do we resolve this community? So what do we do community more community so community community for sure. Any final questions. Yes. So obviously, like, I know for fight and intimacy coordination, there's often like certification and courses that people can pursue. And obviously, like, course set Roosevelt, like, obviously those are great first steps, but are there any. Let's say like a student at Northwestern University wants to pursue this and get involved. How do you suggest sort of concrete steps that they can take in addition to like building community and reaching out to folks. Are there any, like, obviously not courses but like and certification isn't everything but are there any resources that they can use. I wish there were a better answer to that. And there's not really. I mean, shadow, someone reach out to a disability consultant figure. I mean, some of this too is figure out what your niche is your particular specialty. Like I started really in deaf theater. I had some deaf friends when I was in elementary school, and my work began to make it inclusive for them. And then within my own disability journey and realizing, oh, not only do I care about disabled people, but I am a disabled person. Then it became okay well how do I expand this to more folks. So I think start with what you have and learn more shadow people be in as many rooms as you can figure out what needs exist and how you can meet them. It's really shadowing that we probably is the best software for now. Yeah, because there's no, there's no manual there's no course there's no certification for that. Anything else. Do we have any questions online. I can check that so quickly. Okay, don't want to leave out online friends. They also are I believe like 30 seconds behind. Cool. So no worries for the next 30 seconds then. If you do wish to connect with me and I hope that you do. I am on all social media, my, my brand, if you will, I'm always Ali Easton. I've been signing my emails that way since I was in high school and I just decided that's what we're going to do from here on out so I'm always at least and please, please, please feel free to reach out. I'm happy to connect with any questions and as a support resource anytime, or to point you in the direction of other resources. Thank you again to Ashna and to the seesaw team and it's been a pleasure and a joy to be here with you all today. I look forward to connecting more. Thank you so much Ali for that informative and wonderful presentation and thank you everyone for your brilliant questions I learned so much is from what you guys asked. I'm assuming we don't have any online questions yet. So, I was information is available in the welcome packet that all of you got all her social media is on there. So please check it out the welcome packet is linked in that QR code over there on the door. I can see why a lot of QR codes in this room because a lot of cool resources and organizations for you guys to connect with. So, to emphasize Ali's punctually well we're going to take a break. Next, let's say. 18 minutes. It's 1112. Let's meet back at 1130 for Sahai's presentation. In my hometown, there was bagels and coffee. I'm not sure how the cool resources around the room and of course I'm assuming Ali would love to connect with any of you if you'd like to speak with her. Thank you so much and I'll see you here at 1130.