“It’s not just about being invited to the party,” says Ava Xiao-Lin Rigelhaupt, Autistic Creative Consultant for the musical How to Dance in Ohio. “It’s about being asked to dance.” Based on the 2015 documentary following disabled young people in preparation for a spring formal, the show (which ran from last December through early February on Broadway) marked a milestone for the theatre community, as it centered disabled folks not only onstage but throughout the process. This moment, as celebratory as it was, reminded me just how rare it has been for disabled audiences to really be “asked to dance.”
As the industry struggles with audience retention rates, many non-disabled American theatre leaders have failed to realize the extent to which inaccessibility impacts their public, approximately 27 percent of whom live with disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The country’s first civil rights law for disabled citizens, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, was only passed in 1973, guaranteeing human rights to disabled people and tying federal funds to non-discrimination. And while the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 laid out clearer and more comprehensive guidelines for equitable opportunity and societal participation, there weren’t exactly shining precedents for theatres to follow.
“I came into the field when there wasn’t one, really, because we didn’t know what we were doing. We were making stuff up,” recalled Betty Siegel, the Kennedy Center’s director at the Office of Accessibility and VSA (formerly Very Special Arts). Today Siegel and the Kennedy Center host the annual national Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD) conference, a much-needed gathering place for access workers and disabled trailblazers. These include folks from the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where I experienced my first accessible performance with my brother Miguel, who has rarely been welcomed into public spaces.
Since their first sensory-friendly initiative in 2018, Broward Center community engagement manager Gustavo Padrino and vice president of external affairs Jan Goodheart have invigorated South Florida’s access programs, forging extensive partnerships with disability community
