Disability and Theatre: A Practical Manual for Inclusion in the Arts is a step-by step manual on how to create inclusive theatre, including how and where to find actors, how to publicize productions, run rehearsals, act intricate scenes like fights and battles, work with unions, contracts, and agents, and deal with technical issues. This practical information was born from the author’s 16 years of running the first inclusive theatre company in New York City, and is applicable to any performance level: children’s theatre, community theatre, regional theatre, touring companies, Broadway, and academic theatre. This book features anecdotal case studies that emphasize problem solving, real-world application, and realistic action plans. A comprehensive Companion Website provides additional guidelines and hands-on worksheets.

This succinct and engaging text examines the complex relationship between theatre and disability, bringing together a wide variety of performance examples in order to explore theatrical disability through the conceptual frameworks of disability as spectacle, narrative, and experience. Accessible and affordable, this is an ideal resource for theatre students and lovers everywhere.

Celebrated as an outstanding conceptual dance piece on the one hand and harshly criticised for being a contemporary freak show on the other, 'Disabled Theater' by Jerome Bel and Theater Hora polarises the public. In either case, the production raises central questions on the role of people with cognitive differences in our society, as well as on basic norms and conventions of theatre and dance. This book takes 'Disabled Theater' as a springboard to a broader discussion on theatre and disability at the intersections of politics and aesthetics, inclusion and exclusion, virtuosity and dilettantism, identity and empowerment.

A comprehensive reference to people, organizations, print, media, and miscellaneous resources pertinent to theater and disability within the United States. All types of theater and drama activities are represented, including professional training, performance, audience development, education, creative dramatics, puppetry and mime. Listings are also included for theater with senior adults and for drama therapy with individuals who have disabilities. Co-published with the Association for Theatre and Disability.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"Cripples ain't supposed to be happy" sings Anita Hollander, balancing on her single leg and grinning broadly. This moment--from her multi-award-winning one-woman show, Still Standing--captures the essence of this theatre anthology. Hollander and nineteen other playwright-performers craftily subvert and smash stereotypes about how those within the disability community should look, think, and behave. Utilizing the often-conflicting tools of Critical Disability Studies and Medical Humanities, these plays and their accompanying essays approach disability as a vast, intersectional demographic, which ties individuals together less by whatever impairment, difference, or non-normative condition they experience, and more by their daily need to navigate a world that wasn't built for them. From race, gender, and sexuality to education, dating, and pandemics, these plays reveal there is no aspect of human life that does not, in some way, intersect with disability.

How Canadian theatre artists are challenging traditional theatre practices and reimagining disability on stage.

Unfixable Forms explores how theatrical form remakes—and is in turn remade by—early modern disability. Figures described as "deformed," "lame," "crippled," "ugly," "sick," and "monstrous" crowd the stage in English drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In each case, such a description distills cultural expectations about how a body should look and what a body should do—yet, crucially, demands the actor's embodied performance. In the early modern theater, concepts of disability collide with the deforming, vulnerable body of the actor. Reading dramatic texts alongside a diverse array of sources, ranging from physic manuals to philosophical essays to monster pamphlets, Katherine Schaap Williams excavates an archive of formal innovation to argue that disability is at the heart of the early modern theater's exploration of what it means to put the body of an actor on the stage. Offering new interpretations of canonical works by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and William Rowley, and close readings of little-known plays such as The Fair Maid of the Exchange and A Larum For London, Williams demonstrates how disability cuts across foundational distinctions between nature and art, form and matter, and being and seeming. Situated at the intersections of early modern drama, disability studies, and performance theory, Unfixable Forms locates disability on the early modern stage as both a product of cultural constraints and a spark for performance's unsettling demands and electrifying eventfulness.

Introducing drama to the learning experience is guaranteed to enrich a child's development, and is an especially effective approach for children with special educational needs, including those with autism spectrum disorders. This practical handbook offers teachers an array of simple and easy-to-implement theatrical techniques that will enhance students' learning and encourage artistic expression. The author demonstrates how dramatic play doesn't have to be restricted to drama lessons and can be applied to a diverse range of school subjects and recreational settings. 'The Little Red Hen', for example, covers themes that are relevant to literacy (rhyming and rhythm), maths (counting seeds), science (discussing farming), and art lessons (designing costumes). Step-by-step lesson plans take teachers through every aspect of running fun and engaging story dramas, including warm ups, movement, songs and props. Handy tips throughout suggest ideas for developing the plays further and ways to adapt them according to the needs of the group. This book will be an essential and comprehensive guide for anyone interested in drama as an educational tool in inclusive or special needs settings.