Since the summer of 2000, a small but hearty disability theatre group in central Texas has been offering “crip theater with attitude.” Actual Lives Austin stages plays about disability culture with a Texas twang.  This is a theatre group that produces plays by and about people with disabilities. They even offer a “Good Cripples Discount” for Friday and Saturday performances.

Disability Activism Intergal to Disability Theatre
Voted “Best Theatrical Activism” by The Austin Chronicle¸ Actual Lives Austin avoids inspiration while pile-driving discrimination. These are not grandma’s stories about disability. The tales are drawn from workshops that “focus on generating autobiographical writing through memory and open-ended interactive exercises.”

The stories present bare-knuckled blockbusters about spirituality, individuality, drug addiction, sex and shoes, to name a few. If they are part of life with a disability, no subjects are off limits. For example, I’d Rather Be a Para than a Quad, by Gene Rodgers, tackles the curious phenomenon of discrimination within disability. 

Actual Lives Austin embraces the disability experience by offering audiences a glimpse of what it means to be disabled through the eyes of those who roll, tap, hop and strut the life. The autobiographies on which the performances are based allow for a self-worth that is seldom promoted by society.

Actual Lives Austin’s Terry Galloway
“Autobiography gives people a chance to articulate their own lives, to put forth their own arguments, their own interpretations of who they are and how they came to be,” says Actual Lives Austin cofounder Terry Galloway.

“People with disabilities often feel that their stories are taken away from them, that politicians, professional caregivers, or members of their own families sometimes unintentionally or deliberately tailor the stories to suit some other political, professional or personal agenda. By writing about their own lives, disabled adults are able to take control of what their lives mean. They can make their own personal and political statements.”

Terry Galloway, author of Mean, Little, Deaf, Queer: A Memoir, states that the performers, all with disabilities, strive to compel attention.

“Demanding attention is easy,” claims Galloway. “Throwing a tantrum in a public space is one way of demanding attention. But often that attention is short lived--it lasts as long as the tantrum does--or ineffective--it is being heeded only as an annoyance. Compelling attention, on the other hand, implies that the listener has as much at stake in the action as the performer.”

Power to the Disabled
Sponsored by VSA Arts of Texas, Actual Lives Austin’s founders realize that life with a disability is about confrontation. However, Galloway believes that “confrontation within theater is structured confrontation.

“It is a space in which people with disabilities can confront a society that may not know or value them. It is a chance for disabled adults to confront the people who stop them in grocery stores to ask ‘What happened to you?’ To put such questioning in a context gives the disabled person the power to take control of the question; to re-present it as ridiculous, offensive or just plain curious.”

Cofounder Chris Strickling agrees: “Working with Actual Lives for the past seven years, I have learned more about disability than I learned in over 25 years as an occupational therapist. I've had many uncomfortable moments working with disabled people as colleagues and friends, moments where my old biases showed, but all of them have helped me better understand myself and my culture.”

Actual Lives Austin performs at the Dougherty Arts Center and provides weekend shows that start at $10. On Sunday, there is a “Pay What You Wish” policy.

Dougherty Arts Center
1110 Barton Springs Road
Austin, TX 78704

Photo shows cast of Actual Live Austin's "Who's Got Your Back" leaning back and catching the person in front of them.