One of my favorite little kids was a wee mouse in a local children's production of The Nutcracker this week, so when I saw this story about a professional company that includes one child with disabilities in its Nutcracker production each year, I had to go "aww."
Things I like about it:
- It's not an "inspirational" "story" about how "amazing" it is that people with disabilities can do things.
- The theater's done this for eleven years now. They adapted the part to fit a wheelchair user who showed up to auditions.
- The article, the theater, and the girl's family treat her as a person first. Quoth the article: "I don't see her being different... she's just a child."
- It's full integration, not just "oh, she wants to play along so let's stick her in the corner where no one will see her."
It brings to mind Charles Mee's "A Note on Casting." The entire page is a good read, but the bit that the story reminds me of is at the end, where he says that "directors should go
very far out of their way to avoid creating the bizarre, artificial world
of all intact white people, a world that no longer exists where I live,
in casting my plays." I realize it's hard to do in ballet, given ballet's physical nature and its emphasis on uniformity of appearance, but you know what? There were wheelchair users in Tchaikovsky's time too. It's not like her presence is distracting or disturbing. The opening scene of The Nutcracker is more about atmospherics than about everybody looking exactly the same. It's about joy and hope. And the last time I checked, joy and hope weren't restricted to able-bodied people.
You know what? Even if they're really just doing this to gain publicity (which I doubt), they're doing it well. So unlike my last news reaction post, I entirely approve of this.
