 Are we here? Are we going to stream live? It's not working again. I'm trying. I'll let you know. No, this is Antoine Hunter. He's had seen a question. So, I won't do it right now. I just want to know what it is. I just want to make sure I can do it. Okay. So, hello to our round participants. Anybody watching us? Sorry, we're late. We lost track of the time. I'm here in Merritt. I'm the executive producer of the Playwrights Festival, which is part of the Playwrights Foundation here in San Francisco, and we help make plays happen. We help playwrights in whatever way that we can. But we're also just sort of interested in general in furthering modern American theater, pushing its boundaries and making it as inclusive and as representative of the full American experience as possible. And part of that, to me, and I hope to everybody else who's here, involves a radical inclusion of every member of our society who wants to be involved in the arts. We have all of these talented pools of performers, of writers, of directors, et cetera, designers. But we don't always walk in the same roles because of either, well, mostly perceived inability to do so. And so, we're here to talk about that today. And when I say radical inclusion, I'm talking about two different things. Firstly, we have a role that is a character who is deaf, for example. We want to cast a deaf person in that role. That's obvious. But those of us who are working in traditional theaters may not know any deaf actors. And so, it's much easier for someone to think, I'll find an actor that I already know who I think could sign. And we, of course, have no idea if they can really sign or not because we don't speak sign language. So, being able to be aware of the other acting pools that are out there and then being aware of us so that we know who to go to when we're looking for a deaf actor. Or if we're looking for a character that's in a wheelchair. Why not just cast somebody in a wheelchair? It sounds so obvious. But again, people like what they know. And so, it's always easier to go to somebody that you know. And I want to make sure that we know each other so that when we're looking to go to somebody that we know, that is the right person for that role. But then the radical part of it is that I want to be able also to consider deaf actors or actors with mobility issues or site limitations or whatever for all of the roles that I'm casting in a show. And I'm not waiting for some playwright to write something that says it's for a deaf person before I consider using a deaf actor now. And there are the same barriers to doing that which are I might not know the deaf actors. And then there are these other barriers to that which include I don't know what else I might need and I might be afraid that my cultural competency is not sufficient. That I might say something that will offend them. That I might not be able to provide for them what they need. And I'm going to point out right now that I need to have two interpreters right today. And I have one. So for example. So being able to know that I have a pool of people knowing that I have a pool of people I can go to for advice or feel that I'm competent to hire these people and not do that wrong is important to me. So I have a panel of people here who have different experiences. I want each person to introduce themselves and say what their interface with this topic is and what they want us to know. And then we'll probably talk amongst ourselves a little bit and then I'm sure you'll have questions. And everyone before you leave there was somebody who could not be here today but who offered her book. There's a playwright, Pamela Walker who has a book Moving Over the Edge. Artists with disabilities take the lead. And everybody gets a copy of this one. So take one on your way. Thank you. So I've introduced myself. So let's start with Doug. Oh, so the other one. It's okay. I'm Dr. Douglas Gordy. My inclusion on the panel is because for a little over 11 years I was the program director for the Media Access Office which was a program from the State's Employment Development Department and the California Governors Committee. I mean part of the people with disabilities. It was started in the mid-90s in Gavin Hollywood and that's where our main office was. I started the office in 2001 here in the North Bay as a program director and I work in California. Our mission was to help people with disabilities get training in the performing arts, film, television, and theater and then once they were trained help them make the encouragement into finding viable employment. As you can imagine, quite a challenge. When I first started, Pamela was actually the one who was kind enough, she had had a talent agency Performance with Disabilities gave me the best which was about a dozen people at that time. By the time I retired about 18 months ago I had over 220 actors with disabilities in the Northern California area who were actively training, trying to find work. Our LA office, because my background, I haven't teached you either, my background is theater and that's my love and because as those of you who work here now there's very little film our focus in the Northern California office is to help people in theater. Our LA office is the exact opposite there were over a thousand members in the LA office most of them were actually SAG members and were working in film and television. Now, again, now it is my help to Erin with her company Women's Well was doing a production of Pericles and she needed a deaf actress so I worked with her to help her cast that role. Hi, my name is Donahman I play rights. I wrote and play both sound which is at the festival and the play requires deaf actors, hearing actors and actresses. Hello there, I'm J.W. Guido I'm a deaf actor, director and I'm involved with this play and we'll see exactly who I've been involved in theater for many more years than I can handle. Also, I'm an artistic director for the U.R. Deaf Theater and I've produced several of their shows having to do with deaf audience members and deaf actors on stage. I'm a director of playwright who had a stroke six years ago and lost my sight in my right eye and a lot of the use of my left side and thought my career was over but decided it wasn't and that I was going to continue to be a director and so I have to figure out how to be a director with this new body and in the last few years I have returned to directing and I've also written three plays and I have written two of the plays I've written have characters with disabilities and I've become very interested in meeting other people in the theater community and talking to them. Hi, my name is Marilyn Talkington and the reason I'm here today is because I'm legally blind and one of only at this point still to the best of my knowledge there's only two legally blind actors in the country that hold an MFA in acting and I'm one of them and I also directed one of the pieces that just happened so I'm an actor, I'm a director and I'm also a playwright and I design as well I kind of do a little bit of everything and I don't know what else to say about that Okay so what I would love to start with is just I would love to start with well there's so many ways I can go with this I think it might be interesting to start with how and why we were how we were thinking to look beyond the our typical actor pool that we already knew of or why we decided to write a show about deaf characters because what I want to I want to kind of get that out of the way so that we can spend most of the time talking to talking about what needs actually are what perceived needs are and whether those meet and match talk about success stories and so that we can leave everybody here feeling like if I wanted to work with a deaf actor or a disabled actor that I would know how to do that I would be afraid to do that okay, alright should we start with you? Sure, so the question was if you don't know deaf people already what made you say I got to write a show about deaf people yeah, so when I started my play I didn't know any deaf people again, they have any kind of personal connection to the deaf community but I was really struck by this story that took place on Martha's Vineyard where there were these in about a century ago there was a talent show market and Martha's Vineyard had the highest concentration in the entire country and so I thought that was a really fascinating idea especially in terms of because there were so many deaf people there the hearing community just decided to learn sign language so they actually decided to do it I thought that was really great and I felt like that kind of story they could be told because basically because I was super naive and it was all right to play and surely we will find young deaf actors to be in it and that definitely was a challenge that I'm sure we'll expand on later but yeah, that was the reason why I worked in play because I felt like it was important I think it's really important to to illuminate people on the different kind of privileges that we all have and I think hearing is a very interesting subject and I think it's something that is not talked about a lot amongst most hearing people yeah say what you want to say is that what I want to say? there you go you want to talk about how you zone home where is he for well it's not apparent that I have an invisible disability I have a really good mind also really? yes high five and I also have some other things which we won't go into but anyway the media access office was actually a brainstorm from the then director of important development Michael Bury who has an autistic son and is also very interested in the performance questioning why are there no actors with disabilities that I see on my television set or in movies and how do we work with that and so it's exactly what Aaron was saying we have to take a two-prong approach if there's a role calling for an actor with a disability why is that not a factor cast by an actor with that disability it's like nobody has a black face nobody who is a white actor and Matt's razor is a performer with disabilities he's going to be on a Brian Murphy's Greek show, American Horror Story calls it blackening when you use a non-disabled actor role in a role of an disabled person with a disability so that's our first challenge to get that out there as a director other than the fact that Big deal is you're not going to cast a non-named actor in quite less good or a single woman you're going to get an album and you're going to get an album we understand that there are at this point actors with disabilities who have better conditions in England but in roles that are not being characters there is no reason why I mean even if the character is not specifically disabled there's no reason why somebody who plays a judge on a prop show can't be a person with a disability in fact that my very good friend Robert Davis Hall who for 12 years has played Dr. Robbins on the original CSI is a double leg entity because it's a double leg entity he got that role because he's a great actor and after he was cast they decided to actually make the character a double leg entity also and he's insisted every season he does something like cleans his prosthetic to let people know yes I am an actor with a disability and I'm playing a disabled role so that's part of it so those are the two prompts making sure that if the character calls for a disability you at least try and attempt to cast it with a person with that disability and that even if the role doesn't call for a disability allow actors with disabilities to try out that well and it's really free from isn't it that if they give you a new cast make that visible so that people then see oh yeah well you know and then bumping our head against is it starts with the casting director and the producer the casting directors screen out anybody with a disability before they even get to the audition process and now SAG has code rules in place so that that no longer happens and it's slowly changing but the number of people with disabilities on the TV screen as compared to the number of people who are disabled there are 16 million people with disabilities in the United States how many can you name if you see on a criminal basis I mean there's more gay media on Breaking Bad then Jamie Blue who's been on two of the seasons of American Horror Story I feel like I'm dominating just to show you what can happen when the audition program gets it Ryan Murphy started using people with disabilities because way back when he was doing the talk he decided to write a role that had was about family in which the young son had Down syndrome and wanted to get plastic surgery so that he would look like everybody else in his family he thought that was a compelling story he did not know anything about people with Down syndrome he didn't know anything about what to do so he contacted my counterpart in our LA office, Gail Williamson who happens to have a son who's an actor with Down syndrome who was cast in the park and created for him and did an entire show about that Ryan was so pleased and so waited and was so just fed by doing that story he decided that he wanted to keep on because of that one story line we had an annual award show the Access Awards where we gave people awards for making that type of effort we came to our awards show in which over 500 actors with disabilities were there he met them on he went around and introduced himself to everybody and because of that a pool of talent that was available and just made it his mission that when everything does it's going to be at least one character and I'll try to speak briefly but I've got to speak briefly so when I was growing up there were several TV shows on or in movies I saw Marlee Matlin a couple of things there was the Jerry Jewel well life goes on with Chris Jerry Jewel and Jerry Jewel went back to life right so it almost feels to me like people were more visible briefly but there's also a playwright that I really love Chuck Mead who is disabled and who writes you don't necessarily see this if you're watching one of his plays but when you are reading one of his plays he always starts with please consider disabled actors in the show or all of them because they all could be played by disabled actors and that just as a person who's reading plays that reminded me that there are other people I might not be considering even mine and then the third input for me was Shotgun Players here which I worked with sometimes back then was working with a deaf actor named Antoinette Macamonte and I just really liked what they did how they used and they actually did not fully interpret the shows that she was in they just found ways for hearing actors to be able to understand what she was doing or saying and did nothing for the deaf community whatsoever except for an employed actor but for the hearing community it was wonderful for me at least I loved the work that she did and I saw how she used her body it made me understand that for sign language since sign language is a physical language this is an actor that's going to give me something physical that maybe hearing actors aren't as good at doing a lot of hearing actors are just standing with probably talking kids and they're standing here and they're acting from the neck on up there's nothing going on in their body connected and I know I'm never going to have that problem with a deaf actor and I could see that by watching her on stage and that made me very curious about working with a deaf actor by the time that I got around to acting on that she had moved out of town and I needed to find somebody else and the way that I came at it was there's a play by Shakespeare called it's not done very often it has a narrator and the narrator character is always a little tricky for people putting on a play because there's the question why are we watching this person narrating and then watching the action act of us why is it important that that storyteller be separate from the action and so as I was thinking about that that's a great place where I can use a deaf actor and that we can say this deaf actor or this deaf storyteller is telling a story and the rest of us who are hearing need to act it out for us because the sign language actually is acting it out for the deaf audience and so I built it so that the rest of the actors were the voice interpreters for that deaf actor but I was very naive I thought that was just it she'd show up and she'd just look at her lines and perform them and we would just voice them and luckily through Doug through the actor that we found and found a wonderful translation team who said you can't just speak Shakespeare you just can't automatically turn that into sign language you need to translate that it's a different language and luckily they're very patient with me it was very obvious to me once they said that of course this is verse and it really needs a translator and they very gracious things at the time creating a beautiful poetic translation and I got to be part of that process with my actor saying what are all of the connotations of this word that's written here does that mean this nuance doesn't have this nuance doesn't mean what else might it mean and so we would just brainstorm all different meanings of a word so that they could create the best sign for it longer than just working with my hearing actors but it was so much more rewarding to me that I have been looking for the opportunity to do it again ever since and so that's what I want to bring to this conversation is that yes it is harder it requires you to learn some things it requires an extra time and often requires extra money but not always but it is 100% worth it not only is the work fascinating and wonderful and not only does it I think all of us who are in theater are here because we're interested in human nature and in learning and there is no better learning experience so I'm very passionate about this that's all I want to say and I want to then talk to you guys about what your experiences have been and see since I just talked about experiences with deaf actors talk about first of all your company and then also what and how it goes when you're working with hearing performers or other hearing artists either if you bring them into your company or when you're coming to join a company that's mostly hearing I work with deaf experience side by side having a voice coach so we have directors for the deaf actors and same issues come up in our company it's always the budget right and so the deaf world is so small we are so spread out all over the place and so getting the money is why people name it usually an issue housing all of it so we are very limited financially often also for the audience that's another issue many people for the audience have not been exposed to deaf theater when they come to the first time they may not be interested so they just need to expose and engage their interests and help them understand the idea of deaf theater it's not that we would have factions or you would have voice interpreters the entire time through the spoken language but other techniques that we've used in our experimenting but we've been successful at this and so we just have to be making it creative in our productions as an actor now from that perspective it's really difficult to find opportunities nationwide and that is they're limited to those deaf characters and I want to try of course to take on a role as a deaf actor any role that art any more it's required to be there I think that's all for this moment can you tell us a little bit you mentioned techniques that you use not always doing voice interpretation but various techniques you use to tell us a little bit about this it really does depend on the production of course we just had a recent production it was a deaf baseball player one of the issues in the play is that he was the only deaf actor in the production in a cast of 12 so to work all that out together for deaf entering audiences we put in the captions and we were successful in that we did 39 steps and yes in the wonderful play we had a full production in ASL we had voice actors who sat on the side of the theater provided the voice work so there are many different ways of doing this when you do deaf theater for example it's so cool what's the name of the theater? and this is New York Deaf Theater and it's New York City almost like Deaf West have you heard of Deaf West as a company in Los Angeles so we're kind of the equivalent of New York City same idea so I haven't seen I haven't seen JW's company but Deaf West for those of you who don't know this is a company that's doing work of the quality of ACT like they're really it's not this is not of any lesser quality than you would see your best theaters so we really do have a connection with hearing actors you want to take a bit? as a director I have a small company in New York for many years we were called Flying Faith Theater and our mission was to tell women's stories on stage and another part of our mission that we never quite found a way to articulate but that my artistic director and I felt very strongly about we wanted to have a stage filled with different kinds of bodies different types different ethnicities and we really made a strong effort we were casting to make that happen every expression we did on stage people that looked like the world and looked like our lives we could relate to it that way and even then I was interested in seeing the people whose bodies were different and I remember we had to do it it was something that I was thinking about and now that I have a body that looks differently my interest has grown vastly where I want to work with people whose bodies move in unexpected ways and feel comfortable experiencing that on stage I just was very excited to be and I've been doing stuff of the community classes with access dance integrated dance disabled and non-disabled dancers moving together and I'm now wondering what would integrated theater be like how would that happen would I create a production with an integrated company disabled and non-disabled and it's just something I'm doing a lot hoping to meet more people who might be interested in that and writing plays with characters that would experience to hear about the characteristics I think a lot about the classics is a great area for experimentation with working with people with different physical abilities that there is anyone who can be a mythological character in a Shakespeare play a person with the other gender or a person with a different body type so that's very what I hope to explore can you tell us a little bit about what, so Jay Nilly you talked about making his own theater but there are the challenges in getting heard outside of that pool of actors who you're already working with because there are the real or perceived barriers about having to fly somebody from the momentary barriers barriers and so on are there any barriers or what are the particularities that you're fighting now and you're in your body I need to get out and stretch a lot sitting for a long period of time is really the hardest thing so when I'm in the audience I often do these kind of light days I can and when I'm rehearsing I need to be able to stand up at the table and move around I need to take breaks where I actually get to move around as opposed to talking through the whole break the way I used to do I spout enough I wanted to be here yesterday but I wanted to be here today and I have a friend from that class and she also want to stroke and she is really bad at Asia and it was never a problem in our friendship because we met as dancers moving together so when I go see her now I say let's just get up and dance you know what's interesting is when J.W. was saying that the deaf community spread out as somebody in the blind community I actually am often jealous of the deaf community because they got a culture and I found that the blind community although they got a culture spread out it's not a culture in terms of theater it's very very hard to find artists who are blind for the vision everything in between who have been given an opportunity not just on stage but just to receive training so some of the challenges and I'll say success as well some of the challenges are a lot of blind and low vision actors will just be denied even actually participating in the classroom to receive the training because of visual impairment and that's not happening 10 years ago that's actually happening right now and in San Francisco and in the Bay Area about 10 years ago I was actually because I need to enlarge all my scripts and after usually the scripts are like 12 font so for me to actually perform at the stage of meeting my scripts need to be 42 point so I'm literally flipping them the script very quickly but before I could actually enlarge my scripts myself I would have to take them to a photocopy place and enlarge them to hold the script so close to my face the director said to me if you can't see the script you know long on stage and so I was excused from the audition and so I think there's there's a real learning curve for casting directors for directors and there's a learning curve for the actors too finding our voice because I wasn't in battle with them but I had to figure out this is what the atmosphere is and how do I come in as prepared as I possibly can because I cannot change everybody I can't it's impossible so what do I have to do to prepare myself and that's when it was that's when I was just I really didn't take anything for granted and go in to auditions memorized and go in and just have to work that harder which is a very interesting thing to prove about not only the directors having to work harder but the actors having to work harder too for example I was in a show at the Aurora Theater a couple years back and I played a soldier and it was the only female in a group of 500 male soldiers and we had to climb down this 10 foot this 10 foot shelf of some sort and I couldn't see where the steps were and so all the other actors when they were down they were fine and we were carrying weapons and so the director a friend of mine I said I'm going to need for you to show me how to do this and then on my own time I'm just going to need to run and run and run and run so that's exactly what happened I ran this one move about a hundred times just so my body could know it and my eyes weren't involved I was literally more involved there's that I feel like I could say so many stories even as a as a legally blind director the things that I have to do for myself because there's also like because I have a hidden disability none of you would ever know how much do I want to let the world know that I've got a disability because all of a sudden things change in the mind I mean I can imagine I said legally blind but not all of a sudden there's ideas about who I am so I have to be willing to step forward and go yeah I'm legally blind this is what I need I'm not going to make something story about it but this is what I need so as a director when I'm directing god bless the actors that I've worked with if they're working to see you know like I'm right up in their faces and I back up and see the whole picture and then I get right up again so I can see what's going on and sometimes I don't know how to see what's going on but today one of the actors I was like I don't hear you smiling and she's like oh I wasn't I'm sorry okay so she gets a laugh because of mine I can't that brings up something for me can I say something please which is that there's this other acute awareness that accompanies a quote disability that I think is really interesting and also unseen ability that your ability to hear that is acute it's very present it's very developed yeah I would be curious what what it is for JW in terms of what he's like what's been developed it's just sort of overcompensating again because I know that I don't hear better I just listen better because that's my honest I don't know if JW wants to speak to that or if it's a thing can you rephrase your question sure so as a visually impaired person as somebody that's been losing their vision over the course of my entire life the way I see is by listening so I'm not going to be able to see or even smile but I'll be able to hear in your voice what you're saying so that's something so my sense of hearing is actually like developed in a greater way so if there's any other senses that you feel sort of popped up oh sure pretty much it's the office that I use my eyes visually much more because I'm not relying on my hearing so right and that's why I think deaf actors are the best in my virtue in any way it's true I'd say I understand the feeling though it's just a different different scene I would like to say something I would like to know for you on the actor when you see the actors on stage what are your surroundings what goes on in the scene what are your surroundings in the setting is there a greater sensitivity to the actor or to any of the other actors to the actor of the actor so do you see in those more of the actors on stage are you more aware or more sensitive visually to what's going on in that context on stage okay well do you need am I used to that process yes so with the hearing actors who are on stage we're just saying do you notice that you are more sensitive to perceiving a wider range of what's going on and more of what's going on yes and the process I've been an actor for almost 10 years so right visually I would notice there are common issues that are easily modified and things that we can do about that on stage and so that everybody is kind of on equal footing and if there are other issues that come up that's the point where we can sit and talk about it and work it out so common and then different so I think actually Mary Lee Williams said it was a great segue into let's talk about what the challenges are and then we can end up with successes yeah you know it's interesting because I feel like you just said hours talking about the challenges and there's like a whole spectrum like somebody who's totally blind who has fears of challenges versus everything it's vastly different so right obviously we can't cover everything I think the more one I'm trying to make sure we get to is a feeling that I want to hire you Mary Lee, what do I need to know to be able to hire you and I know that that sounds very particular to you and being aware that being aware that everybody would be different but how do you like to be approached with questions about that maybe that's a more general way to put it if I'm saying I want to hire you for a show what kind of questions should I be asking to make sure that I'm being either culturally confident or really just providing what you need so what kind of questions are the best where do I start I think the main question is what accommodations do you need and it's my responsibility to say I need to text and dot format so I can enlarge it I need to walk the space ahead of time you know then I listen to the things that I know that I'm going to need and you can say that to somebody that is totally blind to what accommodations do you need and then that's going to be different so that's really the big question and then when I actually ask for something yeah and not make something drawn out of that oh I don't want to do that and not as a model okay and then you're saying you also take responsibility for like for example the retreat realized I hadn't enlarged anything for you which you hadn't asked me to do but I was like I should have realized I needed to do that I didn't ask you for it so I was asking you after the fact oh gosh I should have done this what can I do to help should I be reading this to you how can I make this work for you and sometimes I'll go yeah and I won't create a big story about it or sometimes I'll be like no I got my glasses we'll say though this is something I just directed so there's my guy he's total and I want to see my people on stage I want to see more visually impaired and blind actors on stage so I'm like I'm going to cast him in a one minute play festival in a 10 play that's going to be awesome are you ready for that? and it was actually a wake up call on my end because his challenge is very difficult and so it actually took me double the time to actually figure out how to communicate because obviously I use my hands a lot when I talk about things I use my face so I had to relearn how to communicate certain directions especially staging and so as a director not even a visually impaired director my job on the other side was to go okay Debbie what do you need from me what's the language that you need and giving you an example working on this scene what kind of words can I use that will best give you the best direction of where to move and how to and so we had to create a vocabulary together and that takes time and that takes time although now you haven't now we have and I think that's I'll call you in just a second but I think that's a job as a director anyway you're often working with actors who don't quite speak the same vocabulary that you do and I was working with a dancer one time I just forgot that she was really only trained as a dancer and she was getting very frustrated she was like whenever you feel like moving just tell me when to step in how many steps to take which is really offensive to an actor on this one I don't have to step three steps forward the actor was like the path was what she wanted to hear and she was feeling like why isn't she telling me where I need to be how am I supposed to interpret when I don't know where to do it and as soon as it clicked in my head oh right you're about an answer and I'd say oh okay one handlet speaks to you I want you to take three steps towards him to say this line and then I want you to take two steps to the side on this line and all of a sudden she had a hugely filled out character so it's really just an extension of what we're already doing as directors anyway and also I would think terribly exciting it can be yeah I mean it can be scary but it's exciting this actually reminds me too because something that we haven't talked about is the etiquette right because what ended up happening in this last one I was directing David is everybody grabbed him and started moving him around and that's our instinct stop touching me just tell me where I need to go and there's a certain etiquette because all of a sudden then they become a child and the person with the disability in the room is not a child you just have to figure out ways to communicate with them instead of pushing them and tugging them and doing all these things we think we're helpful that's not super helpful I'm curious to see if that came up at all how did you get the rules came up in this rehearsal process show you yeah then we have to get back to Karen's question oh I'm sorry I'm sorry no I think that's because it's such a natural transition yeah and I'd love to hear I think the thing sort of being applied is generally what you have with personal or the economy definitely interpreters and what beyond that so as deaf actors what you hear is that people are aware of that culture and they know what to do and how to work in that space especially how to work with interpreters don't talk to the interpreter talk to the actor the interpreter will be interpreting our conversation interpreting for you and we just sort of go along with that so why ask me this question Karen I have way too many I just wanted to sort of talk about the issue when you say to Karen how can I make it possible to work with you or have you work with me and I think what so many of us especially if we work for theater companies that are positioned to make a different choice really need to begin to do is check our own privilege all kinds of privilege that so often it's the simple things so I'm sure that the kind of preparation that someone like Marilyn needs before she can walk into an audition it's not going to work if they say oh yeah we're going to do a cold read of course she's not going to be able to walk into the door and read the script but neither is someone who is dyslexic and so I think that what tends not to happen is for companies to take the responsibility first first of all to say roles are open to all and actually mean that and have something there that says please let us know if accommodations are needed because I think differently able artists just assume that they don't really need all because most of the time they actually don't so I think that the excuse that often gets made for people with privileges they say well I just didn't think about it but that's what privilege means is that you live in a world where you don't have to think about the color of your skin your ability to walk your ability to hear your ability to see you and so I'm really interested in what we can all do to make people think about it so that from the get-go and putting a call out to artists that it is very clear that all artists are welcome to submit plays, audition direct, design, whatever it is and that accommodations will be made to the best of our ability what was that phrase that you said let us know about accommodations at the beginning like all roles are open please let us know about any accommodations you may need one of the big problems though is that there are still a significant amount of theaters in this area that aren't wheelchair compliant for the audience let alone the actors you can't have actors auditioned if they can't get onto your stage and over 50% of the theaters in this stem an actor who's in a wheelchair cannot get onto the stage yeah we're all the greatest things around I don't think I would answer I also think much like in the classroom there are certain things that we see as accommodations that could just be standard practice right like there are funds for dyslexia that could all scripts could be continued in a fund that everyone can read on the other side back to trying to connect communities my brick and play that has one the lead is that there is a partial hearing character and a character who's never has sort of learned ASL mostly do across the main character but for those of us who are doing independent non-equity theater we talk about companies doing work as good as Berkeley Rep which is great and you know we're going to be looking at lots of grants just to hire actors and an ASL fluent stage manager and to try and deal with this we do like a six month workshop so that we aren't offensive and that we are dealing with both communities where do we find the Bay Area non-equity deaf performers or ASL fluent performers because I'm not entirely sure that the theater in New York or in LA it's going to be really useful because we can't fly folks in from LA or New York or wherever I can talk to our professor about this which was very difficult and in a good way we really had to because there are actually four deaf characters in this play and we made a commitment to hire deaf actors for the roles and so then the process at least for me was Erin already had some experience in this world but I had none and so the process really was to find the ways in which the community communicates with one another you know and so and we really because we made a commitment the issue of equity versus non-equity the issue of distance versus non-distance the issue of ASL fluency versus non literally was not on the table we just decided that we were going to permit the funds to make this work and so we made a budget we did the fundraising and we we're in a different position we don't rehearse as many hours but and within a few weeks the word got out and we just we started from I mean I started at Ground Zero so did our casting director Erin had some wonderful woman here and and thank you and she also knew an ASL interpreter Jack my name is Jack Cook I'm sorry and I also knew an ASL interpreter who is an actress we worked with quite a bit actually so you may need names but I'm telling you what our process was in doing it in the end people began to come to us and that was a really beautiful thing and we met J.W. Guido and he lived he's the one who lives in Buffalo so so I mean it really works the same way that any theater is networking in word of mouth and so the difference when you're when you don't have for example a part of a deaf actor who have seen actors around town then you think back on or you ask your friends who would be good for this role and you describe the role so you're just adding and I want this person to be a deaf performer it doesn't mean not all the deaf performing in the role are union members there are plenty of deaf actors who are not so the union membership I think is not going to be an issue for you at all it's about to know the community leaving you some extra time to find those people and from what I said to Amy was the issue here is finding our ASL director and if we can get one of these people that is known and trusted then the actors will feel safe to come and work on the production and then they'll start spreading the word I might be busy or J.W. might be busy but he says there's this other actor they're going to help you find the pool of actors for which to choose and apparently there's one other deal with that because I really had no idea that I needed to do translation at all I suddenly the budget was way more than I thought it would be and I'm too stubborn to get something up because of money I just said we're going to find money but again I reached out to Kendra and to the translators and said do you have any ideas on this and they helped put things into my mind about who might do that funding who might find that very very exciting to do and so we ended up actually having no problem meeting that budget even though it was double what our normal budget was it was easier to find that show than any other show that I had never produced we're actually we're looking to do any grants and they pushed the show back in year to make sure we can have the time find the time to get the money really have to be prepared it's a wonderful wonderful thing though so if you know if you have your cultural competency down on this then if you're going to the traditional branding sources then you're going to have to explain to them why it's so much more expensive really important but there are also like what we found and I don't know if they're still funding but what we found back in 2002 was all the cell phone companies were funding because people because if you're deaf you're working with text a lot of times and so telecommunications companies had either they were working with deaf employees or they just sort of got that they wanted to find something that allowed people to text or they were they had products that allowed people to text because they were already sort of aware of the deaf community and interested in participating and showing themselves as human citizens so we're connected like that then again because of our privilege we won't ever think about but if you ask just like asking what accommodations do you need asking would you really be particularly interested in supporting this that's how you find the additional accommodations I just wanted to add to since I've been through the casting process twice now for sound once in New York and one here in the Bay Area and both both times were daunting and very difficult and very scary because when you start off kind of with like this blank slate you don't know where to where to actually start to find people I initially started casting in New York but the thing is you have to just look and try and be resourceful and then things start to open up and my dad there was saying we're able to bring in like our ASL director who is really well known and things started opening up for us and we started getting more names and that really helped and now that we've gone through this process already and you're looking to look for artists we can totally have this dialogue and I can share this is really what we all need to do because we can we have to get away from this whole community of people we know and we have to start moving towards the idea of they're out there and we're just not looking hard enough or we just don't know where to look yet but we can educate ourselves and figure out where they're at oh she's not deaf Kathleen Ridley she's not deaf she's ASL fluent but she's ignorant and I think she's a child of deaf adults okay anyway I think Brian is a non-cat oh okay oh well I don't know how she is fluent in sign she works interpreters she works with people and we're getting a top level interpreter and all over the Bay Area somebody said Brandon yes but Kathleen worked for two years she went on a tour before she knew any ASL at all she was hired by theater in the deaf to tour with them and they wanted actors who were not yet interpreters and they wanted to train an actor to speak sign language American Sign Language and so I don't know if that's the right term to speak but anyway she told me this story it was like going to a foreign country and having to be diverse and having to learn the language and that's how she became became sorry I didn't mean to that was kind of like a side march but I was going to ask what I was going to ask was aside from doing our block files using styles rather than manually embedding to the center manually embedding stage directions what can we as playwrights do to make our scripts more accessible as a deaf actor we're responsible to do a translation for ourselves and it could be that if we're not skilled in that process of translation work we would need an ASL director to work with us on a script and that takes a lot of extra time so just being aware of that that we would need to be given more time yeah and what he's referring to in case you don't know that's a grammar as English or other written languages so you're always translating from the written sentence to what the ASL signs would be and I'm trying to think of Michelle give me the line you just blurted your head out there's so many here I can do my life may be the reason why I can't I don't know it would put the English for the ASL book she would do some ASL lossing in English hearing my wife Mabel the reason she did not hear is because of the scarlet fever she had as a child in the ASL loss my wife Mabel reason why she don't she young child sick red fever ears decline so it is a different it's a different version of English words that help you to know what signs that's the signs that you're going to do and then so the ASL director or the actor is going to be translating from English into what those signs would be which then turns into a visual physical language which is unrelated to what we're saying there but because we're on this I wanted to say this too sign translations can get easily lost if they're not videotaped which is a big giant issue if you are working on a non-union or if you're working on a partial union or if you have a back and so your translation your ASL transmission will get lost which is like a crime really a crime there are slight work rounds where you can have a translator performance you know instead of the I don't know any of the union actors they work in or if you have a big enough union contract then you are allowed to videotaped but it's just one other little detail if you are working with deaf performers that if somebody has gone to the trouble to translate that script preserve that translation so that other companies can use it and don't want to start from scratch well do you blind then do blind people do you still use Braille do you do the trend do you change that script to Braille depends on if a blind person reads Braille I don't read Braille I mean it's what it's like what's that? it's a thing of the past absolutely not Braille is huge I just happen to not read it so that's where it comes into the question of what accommodation do you need if I need to climb up so for one person it is I need it in Braille and for another person it is I need it in you know wow where did I pull that word I need it I need a coffee I need some tea I know I saw the questions fill up we already mentioned earlier something about training training programs not being all inclusive and I wonder if there is something that you can speak to this a little bit I'm not sure how the academy is responding to it and ground the movement like that blind disabled actors and they can't I might have I don't know anything about so I think you were talking about when you said most blind actors are not getting the opportunity to train or literally turn away from the classroom yes I'm sure that's not legal no but the justification is that they would have to alternate technology so they can justify not having an experience with a severe disability by saying well that changes our pedagogy and you're not getting you know somehow they're able to work around it or you just find out that they just don't call back and then you find out later but there's a training program I won't name any names that happens to be Berkeley that has actually said we can't have you we would have to slow everything down in class to accommodate for you and we just don't have the resources and so there's a particular blind actor who has been denied two or three classes and like I said this is happening right now which is also saying you're not a professional you're not going back to that if you have that in front of your face and then there's the cycle because then there's no training and then the casting directors are like there's no one that can train so where does it start why do we need to continue this conversation like another two hours and we can't we're out of time we have pizza out in the hallway please grab a book and I have more in a box so I'll bring those out and please continue talking to I think J.W. probably has to go get ready for the show I hope everyone's staying for the show for the rest of us if you have questions for J.W. write it down and we'll get answers later thank you very much for being here and don't be afraid to hire deaf actors and actors and disabilities