At the Intersection of Disability and Drama: A Critical Anthology of New Plays

＂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.

John Michael Sefel is a Melton Center fellow and co-editor of Texas Theatre Journal. His original plays have been performed in New York City, Boston, and at regional theatres and colleges in several states. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Amanda Slamcik Lassetter is a theatre faculty member at Baylor University, co-editor for Texas Theatre Journal, and executive board member for Therapy Center Stage Productions, a non-profit focused on mental health and healing through the creative and dramatic arts. Jill Summerville is a performer, playwright, and scholar. Her research explores the complexities of putting actors with disabilities onstage.