Hi. My name is Mandy. I am a cisgender white woman and I am almost 40. And it’s exciting to me that you are interested in reading or listening to my thoughts, but I also find it terrifying.
And because sometimes my brain doesn’t work the way I need or want it to – it’s too fast, or too slow, my eyes can’t focus, my ears ring, and lately I’ve taken to wearing earplugs in public so I don’t get overwhelmed and go home and not leave my house for days due to the sadness – out of the fear I might run into one of you.
But yet, I really am excited you’re here!
Thank you for sharing this time with me. As I imagine you reading or listening to this, I am going to try and just be present with my anxiety.
Here we go:
Hi. My name is Mandy. And I just shared some of my access needs with you. I’lll ask you to hold them as you read or listen to what I’ve learned six months into my internship. OK? Thanks. Because the integration of my access needs – is my practice.
How did I get here:
- 2016 – I was diagnosed with an Anxiety-based condition.
- 2019 – I experienced a Traumatic Brain Injury – it was my second – and I needed a different type of care from the people around me.
- 2019 I was performing in a show. After expressing my needs to stage management, and to the director, and to the lighting designer – no shifts were made. The dress run happened, and fell off the 4ft high deck. I was told it was my fault – and I believed them.
- 2020 – The Great Pause occurs. People are talking about needs, care, and a system of shifts – and some of us now have the slightest taste of what it means to be isolated and the lack of access that some have experienced their entire lives.
- Late 2021 – I suddenly am offered my first in person audition since The Great Pause. I was asked to prepare 8 pages of text in 24 hrs and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even read the words on the page.
My interest in access has always been present in my work – because I have always been present in my work.
In 2022 I was hired to manage a Canada Council research project with Prologue Performing Arts and the W. Ross MacDonald School for the Blind. The students of this school are from the Low Vision and Blind Community – and have multiple other intersections of neurodiversity, physical mobility, and learning variances. The project focused on how to decenter theatre from the visual.
Three areas emerged from this research:
- Restructuring of the creative model and timelines to suit Disabled youth creators.
- Non-Visual Dramaturgy – which included integrating access into the use of technical and design elements.
- The practical application of care – for the creators and the audience.
I created a ten-part podcast series (that you can still find online that outlines the findings). It was during this project I embraced my multihyphenate-ness as a theatre maker – because access and care are holistic. This process of making meaning, and creating multiple points of access to that meaning, has started to motivate me to ask more questions and use the word dramaturgy.
In 2023 I attended the LMDA conference – and approached Marjorie Chan of Theatre Passe Muraille with these questions. TPM generously invited me to participate in the development of a project called Blind Dates, centred on the stories of Blind creator Vivian Chong. We then applied to the Metcalf Foundation Internship Program, and now I am the Dramaturgy & Accessibility Associate at Theatre Passe Muraille (with Marjorie Chan and Jenn Sartor as my mentors). I have been exposed to a variety of projects (from a creative and producing lens) which hold a multitude of integrated access.
I have learned a lot – and I have also learned how much I still have to learn. So I’m going to leave you with some of the things I am discovering and learning, six months into my internship at Theatre Passe Muraille:
(But before you read or listen to this list, I think it’s important to share that I sometimes use audio recordings as a way to record thoughts when I have them. This habit started out of necessity after my Traumatic Brain Injury in 2019, since sometimes my brain needed to work in new ways. Then later, when I have the capacity, I transcribe the text using AI. I have complicated feelings when it comes to the integration of AI into our work, but this element has allowed me to record and process my thoughts in a way I otherwise wouldn’t be able to).
These 14 notes are pulled from my updated list as of this morning (there are currently 87 thoughts on this list so this is the highly curated version).
- Dramaturgy is Accessibility. Making Meaning, and continuing to discover new ways to make meaning, is the key to access.
- We must fight the neoliberal paradigm, we can no longer afford to prioritize product over process.
- Positionality and the personal is our work. We must deconstruct white supremacist, abled biases, and top-down creative processes. And INSTEAD adopt non-linear and non-normative temporalities – THIS IS OUR WORK (and I must build my capacity to sit in my discomfort as a white able-bodied appearing human).
- Art-making is the rehearsal for the revolution. We cannot be free till all of us are free.
- Clear Messaging and Consent are the keys to access. The clearer the messaging, the more of us that can give consent. Be mindful that we all process messaging and offer consent in different ways. We can no longer bring audiences into our theatres without this level of mindfulness.
- Creative and Producing elements must work in tandem in a way that is necessary and creates integration – early tandemness and communication at every step must occur – this helps battle othering.
- We cannot be asked to hold care and access for our audiences if we are not holding care and access on the stage and at the tables where decisions are made.
- Positions of cultural power can create change! If you are not budgeting access you are not prioritizing access. And to those persons, I say “KNOW YOUR POWER”.
- Integrating Access at the earliest moment in new work helps embed access as esthetics and creates exciting innovation. Technology and digital works can support this – but human connection is not the outlier, it is the structure to build upon.
- Asking for access and Agency is labour. The teaching of access and agency is also labour.
- Only holding publicly visible access ventures is not enough. We must holistically hold access at every moment in the process.
- We must speak to the communities that require access and invite them into our theatres to bear witness and collaborate. This is bespoke, human-based, and lengthy work.
- Audiences will return to our theatres if we as artmakers can commit to this level of care.
- Access takes time. And furthering access can make great art.
While at TPM I am learning that Access can be found in the big things – holding space for support workers, Relaxed Performances, Deaf performers on our stages – but it’s also in the small things – providing food at a meeting, the way we message someone over Slack, the smile we give someone at the box office.
It is held in the way we make meaning and the way we invite others to engage in that meaning.
Thank you for holding some of my points of access as you shared your time with me.
I encourage us to keep asking HOW we are working instead of WHAT we are working on. Six months into my internship I have learned how much I still have to learn! So let’s learn from each other!
I am interested in a world where we finally can realize access (and care) affects the tangible and intangible – the subjective and the objective – the measurable and unmeasurable – in all moments of everything we do as art makers.
Because access is for all of us, and I am excited to work with all of you!
