Artists Redefine Ability
by Nicole Gluckstern

According to statistics released by the American Association of the Disabled, 48.5 million Americans--almost one in five--have a disability. Less than 15 percent were born with their disabilities; most acquired spinal cord injuries, vision or hearing loss, heart conditions and the like later in life. Despite these sheer numbers, the theatrical world is not especially set up with access in mind. Disability seating is limited, stages are elevated, dressing rooms are too small for wheelchairs and sign language interpreters are under-utilized by theatres of all sizes. Furthermore, professional training tailored to persons with disabilities is almost nonexistent, and many traditionally minded instructors find it difficult to comprehend the adjustments a physically impaired student might need to make within the classroom setting, whether it is bringing a note taker to read the chalkboard, or incorporating a prosthesis into a dance routine. Despite these challenges, a determined core of performers with disabilities in the Bay Area is changing these traditional attitudes, one show at a time.

Bonnie Lewkowicz and Judith Smith

Hailing, as they do, from every possible social, cultural and economic demographic, persons with disabilities represent possibly the most diverse minority group in the country. Still, within such diversity there exists an impulse to discover common ground, and Axis Dance Company may well be at the forefront of this movement. Begun as a side project by a small group of able-bodied and mobility-impaired artists curious to explore their physical limits in a dance context, Axis has since developed into one of the most recognized "physically integrated" dance companies in the world. By collaborating with choreographers like Bill T. Jones and Sonya Delwaide and being persistently vocal about the importance of their work, the mixed-ability dancers of Axis continuously challenge the preconceived notions of what it means to be mobility impaired for all involved: those of the audience's, those of the choreographer's and even their own.

Though she'd studied dance from the age of 5 until she was 15 when an accident with an all-terrain vehicle left her paralyzed from the upper chest down, Bonnie Lewkowicz thought her dancing days were behind her. Determined to remain physically active despite the severity of her impairment, she studied recreation therapy and was additionally involved in wheelchair sports before contact improvisation reopened the door to dancing with a disability, and Axis was born in 1987. As a founding member and core repertory dancer (as well as a professional travel writer and guidebook author), Lewkowicz has watched the company grow in artistry and visibility to its current status as a professional, modern dance company with an international reputation.

Committed to the concept of access to dance regardless of body type, Axis also offers a range of classes and workshops in movement for the mobility impaired and able bodied alike. Lewkowicz relishes her role teaching youth classes in creative dance, especially as most of her students are able bodied. "Having a person with a disability as their teacher demonstrates to them that people of all abilities can and want to dance," she explains.

Artistic director and founding member Judith Smith is especially excited about the BA program in physically integrated dance that Axis is helping develop with CSU East Bay, a process she describes as "crucial" to the preservation and development of the art form. "Most people can't even imagine that a disabled person could or would even want to dance…opportunities for disabled dancers to take classes and workshops outside of their companies are extremely limited, which has been a constant source of frustration for myself and others." Smith hopes that the increased educational opportunities for physically impaired dancers will improve access to training, and stave off the recruitment crisis some mixed-ability companies are facing with the eventual retirement of their core members. Artist retention on the other hand might be a different story, for as Lewkowicz puts it, "I won't still be dancing in 10 years… I can't however imagine not having some kind of role with Axis."

Mark McGoldrick

Mark McGoldrick is not a man who minces words. His answering machine is pithy and blunt, "George Bush is a war criminal, beeeep," and when asked about his wheelchair he'll tell you frankly that he broke his neck. A high-functioning paraplegic for over 20 years, what McGoldrick may lack in leg strength he more than makes up for with stubborn fortitude. Deputy public defender by day, solo performer by night, McGoldrick's latest show Countercoup opened at The Marsh in September. In it, with quiet ferocity, he relates the series of events that led to his catastrophic injury as a hell-raising teenager in Arizona, as well as the lengthy recovery and rehabilitation process.

It's not the first time he's told the story on stage: in 2002 he wrote a piece called Tom and John to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the car wreck that permanently altered his life. But McGoldrick doesn't spend a lot of time otherwise dwelling on the circumstances of that night or its arduous aftermath. He has a life to live after all, and prefers to fill his time sea kayaking in Southeast Asia, canoeing in Australia or performing before an audience of strangers--an adventurer's rush of a more stealthy kind. But while it may have been this rush that first compelled him to take to the stage, it is his greater love for the creation process that has kept him on it.

"I'm intrigued by people's lives," he states. "I want to give a voice to people who don't always get a lot of stage time, who are often overlooked by society." Among those voices are those of the convicts he defends in court, fellow survivors of severe spinal-cord injuries and his own patient family. Although limited to a certain extent in terms of physical action, McGoldrick's easy facility with vocal mimicry and subtle gesture render him eminently capable of conveying character and nuance. And the understated power of his storytelling resonates with audiences of all abilities.

From occasional spoken-word poet hitting the open-mic circuit to performer of full-length solo works, McGoldrick's artistic progression in some way mirrors the slow but steady grace of his rehabilitation process he describes in depth in Countercoup. While he doesn't necessarily consider himself to be an advocate per se for disability awareness, he relishes the public visibility that solo performance, along with his day job as a defense attorney, grants him. Especially since, as he points out, "almost everybody will acquire a disability before they die…whether it's a mobility impairment or something you can't necessarily see, like diabetes. It's not an 'us vs. them' situation."

Marilee Talkington

I knew Marilee Talkington for over a year before I knew she was losing her vision. Like many people with disabilities, Talkington's particular condition isn't immediately evident. Besides which, she'll be the first to tell you, while it's true her encroaching blindness does present certain challenges for a stage director and performer, she doesn't feel it hinders her ability to do either. Nor does she allow it to define her.

Just one of two blind actors in the country to have received an MFA in acting, Talkington graduated from ACT in 2004 and moved to New York, where she founded Vanguardian Productions (formerly Tearany Theatre) and has been creating her own works ever since, among them her solo show Truce, which traces the arc of her visual impairment as well as her relationship with her similarly impaired mother. Back in the Bay Area for an extended visit, she is premiering her latest work at the Exit on Taylor. An exploration of life-altering moments in the lives of four characters, Attrition is the latest installment of Talkington's penchant for creating senses-based theatre, and the first she has written the text for in its entirety before the rehearsal process.

Born with rod-cone dystrophy, genetically passed on by her mother, Talkington currently sees only with her peripheral vision--and only at 20/400, twice the limit of legal blindness, despite her corrective lenses. She has no central vision and has trouble distinguishing certain colors. And yet, she describes herself as "extremely visual." "All my plays start with an image," she explains. "I see the show in my head as I write it…. I'm into colors, movement; I want things to be striking." It's tempting however to conjecture that her theatrical aesthetic is informed by her visual impairment when she goes on to describe the creation of what she terms "visceral theatre."

By engaging the audience's other senses besides sight, Talkington hopes to put them as physically close to the characters' experience as possible. An example of this sensory engagement was with her New York production of Sugarville: A Little Death, during which the audience was exposed to strong smells, such as disinfectant, and forced to move from room to room--one designed especially to resemble the interior of a womb--for each of three acts. In Truce she used a scrim to occasionally hide behind and strategically fading lighting to allow the audience to experience the creeping progression of her vision loss themselves. Attrition incorporates fans to simulate high winds through the theatre and swaths of muslin to create wave patterns on stage. "I don't do realism," she points out. "I want to provoke a reaction in the audience. It's an invitation to wake up parts of their bodies in ways they might not have otherwise had the opportunity to experience."

Nicole Gluckstern is a freelance culture writer and theatre critic for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and a contributing editor for Other magazine.