Summary for Lisa's Week!

Bodies prompt responses:

Wow. You are all so intelligent and passionate on such varied topics that I am grateful to be learning from each and every one of you daily. In this very delayed response to your posts on our Bodies week, I hope the time away has helpd me to better appreciate your thoughts now. Congratulations on semester two nearly completed!

Mike starts us off by sharing a moment of humility given him by his mother on, “the realization that differently abled people don’t give a shit about the pity or sympathy I may want to throw at them, they merely want to live as full a life as possible, the same as me. That they will do that in a way that is different from me means nothing.” I fully agree that the term disabled does a disservice. It’s like giving an excuse, a doctor’s note if you will, from the reality that life still happens and we choose to move through it to the best of our abilities, or not. He recommended a play earlier in the semester that I only now took the time to read, and am SO GLAD I DID. Martyna Mayok’s The Cost of Living is, I agree with Mike, “a beautiful play about a man with cerebral palsy, a quadrapalegic woman, and the people that care for them.” Mayok’s words hit home to an experience I had caring for a particular adult with special needs who was the adult son of a fellow music teacher. Lifting a full-grown human who cannot help and cleaning them are two things I never thought I would do in my life, aside from the needs of an ailing parent when that time may come. I don’t believe anyone ever plans for that nor the impact it has on one’s pysche. “When I grow up, I’d like to…” nope.  

What stuck most for me was a direction Mayok gave prior to the actual dialogue: “Self-pity has little currency in these characters worlds. Humor, however, has much.” Mike also spoke to this in the above quote. If anything were universal or considered a capital T truth, I’d like to think that is. Taking ourselves too seriously is a self-pity trap. She also requests to “make every effort” to cast disabled performers in the roles of Ani and John. I hope there are a growing number of beautiful artists that are ready to accept the challenge, be brave enough to strip away the comfort of privilege, and honor the opportunity. Read it. It’s worth the ride.

Computers may rule and people may be annoying, sometimes, but absolutes are stupid so, again I say, “Back Off Jerry!” And where are you coming from!?!

Austin poses how much we have come to “accept our lack of anonymity and privacy for the sake of more connectivity and better tuned content. Yet it seems, for the time being at least, we have levels of intrusion that we are not willing to accept.” This reminded me of an article I just read regarding a new service Amazon Prime is launching in 37 cities where they can deliver packages directly to the trunk of your car in a parking lot. Click here for The Verge Article. Freaky? How far are we willing to go to breach our anonymity for the sake of convenience?

Where our current opportunities for virtual reality can be lonely, augmented reality seems to hold the possibility of being more connected, more social, more convenient and possibly more fun. He mentioned the craze around the augmented reality of Pokèmon Go! and, though I agree it is odd and wanted no part in it, I saw many teens through twenties I knew going bonkers for this cool new interaction with gaming. In addition to interacting with their environment, they’d make teams and discuss strategies, thus including real interactions. Austin offers, “inevitably we are probably less than a decade away from discrete, perhaps even implantable devices that users can toggle to interact with their actual environment in incredible new ways.” I agree there will be limitations because we are social creatures who enjoy real interaction, but adaptation has always been a part of how we humans do life, whether we want to or not.

Mark speaks to the empathy we want, or do not want, to give when we face our own dark matter, the stuff we don’t want to face, the stuff that isn’t real until we name it and it becomes real. That can be the scariest place to be and the most important place to journey through.

“Maybe that’s the way we work: with relevant experience comes understanding and rapport with aspects of life that were previously unknown.  …Involved contact with another part of existence we were unfamiliar with gives way to some kind of interest and investment.  But I wonder if we can expect more of the essentially self-concerned human...how much can we expand our consciousness to include that which we’ll never know firsthand?”

I’d like to think that this is our greatest challenge, to be invested in discovering the highest levels of empathy in order to tell another person’s story truthfully and fully without having actually lived it ourselves. Living truthfully under imaginary circumstances that have been richly created so that we honor the story, this is our goal, to honor the story as if it is our own. How I hope you are willing to share your story, Mark, at some point, so that others may gain experience through your lens of experience. He closes with, “alas, with age and experience there’s still no guarantee of wisdom or empathy, and intent doesn’t always keep its promise of execution.” I agree with Dharmik’s response to this as he says, “but it’s where it begins.” To go back to the wise woman, Martyna Mayok, here are words that I am letting infect me too: “Self-pity has little currency in these characters worlds. Humor, however, has much.” We are all, indeed, characters if we had the bravery to pursue an MFA and could do with a little patience. Easier said than done? Yep.

Dharmik shared a time when his ability to speak and hear felt like a disability. ASL was the language spoken in the room of family and his skills were not seemingly adequate. It is so easy to be, or at least feel, out-casted based on the lack of an ability that is the majority ability in a situation, regardless of the ability. When communication and understanding is not bilateral, it can be very isolating. He then spoke to the difference of being born OR being born and then having a change from the able-body norm happen later, saying that to be born with something would be easier than to have to adapt in mid-life to a change in the body’s ability. As we age this happens to us all, though to a smaller degree and over time with many of us. We fight what our body can no longer do, until our body tells us enough is enough. A drastic change, I can also imagine, is a more difficult shift to entertain, accept, and work with, but with a good attitude, I agree, anything is possible.

Emily jumps over AI and cyborgism into questioning the potential arrival of aliens and quotes Stephen Hawking comparing this to the first interaction between Columbus and Native Americans, which didn’t go so well for the Native Americans. I had never heard of the Fermi Paradox and was intrigued to learn about its stages of civilization. It makes me feel much smaller in the grand scheme of things when we are discussing tens of thousands of years, anything under 8 legs being disabled, versus being concerned about a choice we make today regarding identity and its future impact on society. This is definitely a different perspective in the extreme, offering that “humanity could be that of a marginalized class.” I admire your ability to go to the extreme so easily while simultaneously exposing me to a humorous show I thought I knew but didn’t. If extraterrestrials are above the way we treat one another and only concerned with survival, that could also be considered a primitive perspective, in some ways I imagine the way our cave men and women treated each other for the next piece of food or shelter. Who am I to know either way, but only able to venture a guess.

Erica riffed on Phamaly Theatre Company, in Denver, Colorado, a company who’s vision is that “every individual with a disability has the opportunity to participate in all aspects of high quality performing arts” and who’s mission is to “inspire people to re-envision disability through professional theatre.” Visions and Missions can often be flowery and pretty but not used as guideposts and aligned with what a company actually promotes. However, it seems that Phamaly is living out their truth as she describes what she knows about this company, and this makes me excited to take in a show if I’m every in the neighborhood. She speaks to the casting of Elephant Man (Thanks for that!) and that their production of Cabaret was well received in Denver. “Cabaret suits itself to this company of actors because persons with disabilities were a race of people the Nazis were looking to wipe out. It adds a whole other layer of the performance without any shoe-horning necessary.” It excites me every time a performance is made better by including the truth about humanity rather than excluding, forging connections rather than building more walls.

 

Drea articulated well my next thought so I’ll let her say it: “It seems like Phamaly embraces life with gusto, in a non-exploitative and honorable way. By looking at the world through, as you said, the “crip” lens, they are able to bring truthful storytelling that isn’t about making the audience feel good about themselves for being able-bodied, but rather to celebrate an any-bodied person through song and narrative.” To celebrate an “any-bodied” person in all facets of their humanity, as a sexual being, as a person equally worthy of having a voice. I’m down for that. Thanks for the well-received riff!

Sarah infuses some sci-fi wrapped history conversation through the lens of Battlestar Galactica to pose some thought-provoking questions about distinguishing an alternate “other” in order to solidify identity for human beings in the here and now. I agree with her offering that the monotonous and cyclical nature of the life I have lived has led me to believe that the past, present, and future align at the point of the capital ‘T’ truth. This truth is ever changing. “Written into the machinations of the planet are the binaries which enable us to exist and to comprehend our purpose for existing. There is day because there is night. … And vice-versa. This is what makes the conflict in Battlestar Galactica roil with unrest; if the Cylons have become so close to humanity that it is now imperceptible; how can human beings be sure that they are human beings?” She refers to Ecclesiastes 1:9 – “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” She offers, “Humanity itself is queered by the possibility of a new standard of intelligent beings, and this functions as a tool to level the playing field.” And the cycle continues. As soon as we find a way to compare something new to something in the past, it becomes normalized and wrought with the same possibilities of the past, good and bad. And the cycle continues. But does that remove human beings from having a purpose? Or does it give us more purpose, to find and make the distinctions and work to rebut the norm? Each of us can decide. This cycle could go forever, so I leave you with that…

Now for something completely different and last but certainly not least in how overwhelming and mind-opening, informative and inspiring that reading all of your thoughts can be.

Drea spoke to past experiences in the service industry when patrons would request gluten free as a “diet technique” versus understanding the ramifications and severity of this disability. She revealed some very real limitations for a friend of hers with celiac disease such as not being able kiss her boyfriend after he’d had a beer or she’d get very ill, things that prevent her from living in a “culturally recognized manner.” Celiac became recognized by the ADA as a disability in 2013. And this is where the ‘aha’ hit me, “It ensures coverage of people with ‘invisible disabilities’, such as epilepsy, diabetes, heart failure, schizophrenia, depression, and cancer.” I don’t recall hearing the term “invisible disability” before this and it named something I never had a name for until now. It’s interesting how much power can come just in naming something when the shoes fits. She recalled a conversation we’d had in class about if a person parked in a handicapped parking spot got out of their car and didn’t immediately get into a wheelchair that they often would get the stink eye. She offers that some people are given those spots to prevent over-exertion and a higher risk for seizure. Many examples could have been offered but, her articulation of this discussion placed me back into my own life and dealing with many similar invisible disability moments that I’ve encountered over the course of 18 years with my current partner who is a Type I diabetic.

Disclaimer: Drea, you are well spoken and your blog really spoke to me. As a result I have opened way too many wormholes in my response to you and hope you know I am grateful for your words, but caution your need to put on a seatbelt in choosing to read this long-winded response. I appreciate your passionate and eloquent retelling of your friend Sarah’s experiences. This has really moved me.

Jesse can hide it well, his high and low blood sugars, until his pump is beeping loudly in a quiet part of a concert, or you can see his face turn saggy and almost comatose when a blood sugar low hits him quick and he wasn’t prepared. There’s a level of dignity that goes out the window when judgement from ignorant people step into the playing field. But we all face it in different scenarios, just at varying degrees depending on how invisible or well adept we are at maneuvering around the curious eyes or the judgemental know-it-alls and how serious our disability is to our quality of life and work. Drea’s friend, Sarah, faced bosses who were “playfully nasty” or passive aggressive regarding her disability. I’m curious if they ever fought insurance claims for “prior condition” clauses… Jesse has faced co-workers who literally have said, “man I wish I had diabetes so I could snack whenever I want and take insulin for it.” More than once! This is not unlike Sara’s comparison to someone saying “watch that cancer,” like it’s a choice. Let me get out my sledge hammer and soap box for this one. Insulin is not a diet drug (ironically like the aforementioned middle class white-girl trend of gluten-free) where you take insulin to break down calories. Insulin, if administered in the right amount and at the right time, can help open the cells to take in nutrients. If any one of many factors is not considered, the insulin can have no effect or too much effect, and the body becomes malnourished, while the toxins left add additional fat and cause problems with insulin resistance, thus making you take more insulin the next time for the same amount of food (which also costs more). Depending on the type of carbohydrate and its complexity, the insulin can overshoot or undershoot the goal, spiraling a body in to a high blood sugar (at its severest can cause seizure, stroke, heart attack, and death) or a low blood sugar (at its severest can cause drunk like behavioral qualities, comatose vegetable state, and death). Once a roller coaster of highs and lows has begun, it becomes difficult to stop the cycle of eating too much and taking too much insulin to regulate the body back to a place of stasis. By then, the body has experienced so many hormones (By the way, insulin is a hormone) that mood and emotions are exhausted and in the extreme responding appropriately without emotional overreaction is much more difficult. As for ‘performing’ his disability, for anyone that knows Jesse, he avoids it at all costs. The extent to which he avoids telling people goes beyond what I deem is safe. When you work with students and your boss doesn’t know you are diabetic, how emotionally and physically safe are the children if something unexpected happens? I’ve met myself coming and going and had to step back and realize, I am not the one with the disability. It is not my responsibility to tell anyone. And I have wronged him numerous times in order to protect the children that he loves and works with regularly. Safety has been more important to me than his integrity, but at what cost? I’m definitely feeling horrible for past choices and finding a bit of humility. In the recent past I have let it go, knowing that he makes his own choices and I cannot worry about what ‘might’ happen. But as for the people who “think” they know about diabetes or celiac disease or a number of other things I still need to less ignorant to, I’m honorably stealing your term for the glucose ignorant people of the world and also calling them ‘glutards.’ In going back to Sarah and her avoidance in order to “not make a big deal out of it”: Avoidance is often bliss if you compare having to explain yourself all the time. The exhaustion is real. And there is no end.  Jesse is also happy to answer any questions you may have about diabetes. He just doesn’t want it to define him. He is a person with diabetes. Not the other way around.

As for futuristic food pellets, I imagine a mix of Drea’s pills and and Austin’s augmented reality in what I remember from the virtual reality on Star Trek, the next generation, when they went into a specific program to experience the taste and texture of eating a particular meal. Bon Appetite!

I’m so glad I was able to take some solid time to read and absorb all your thoughtful musings in this delayed fashion. I found it fitting that Sarah quoted Ecclesiastes. because a song from the same book will not leave me today, chapter 3, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose.”  

May you all have a blessed break.

Post 13: Austin Prompt on Social Change Performance!

Note from John: Apologies for my tardiness in getting this posted! It's my bad entirely. Please consider yourselves to have until Thursday to make initial posts. Austin, if you can get me comments back by Mondayish (4-30), that'd be peachy.  Best, John.

On to Austin's prompt:

 

We have all had the conversation on one side or the other which goes something like this:

A: Did you hear that congress passed a spending bill that will double the military budget and strip the Medicare budget by half?

B: Nah- but I don’t really follow politics.

A: Oh- why not?

B: It’s too depressing. OR B: There’s nothing I can do about it ETC.

In modern political research speak these types of people, relatively indigenous to the West, are referred to as ‘political bystanders’ and comprise at least 10% of the American populace. The reasons for this political apathy are many; from distrust in the political process as a whole, to a belief that their vote is inconsequential, to a feeling of victimization brought on by the impact of a 24/7 media infrastructure that inevitably reinforces a pathos of negativity. 

Indeed this culture of political apathy and distrust lends itself to the climate described by Schutzman in her article “Playing Boal” in which she discusses the uniqueness of the bourgeois Western political landscape: “The post-colonial leisure class with whom Boal tended to work in Europe were capable of engaging their radical left-wing politics in relative comfort; material and physical urgency gave way to a constant, but far less immediate, sense of despondency and hopelessness.”

What has happened in America (and in many Western industrialized nations) is a phenomenon called “self-segregation.” In a recent interview, economist Tyler Cowen (author of The Complacent Class) states: "We're making decisions that are rational and even pleasurable from an individual point of view, but when everyone in society behaves this way — to cement in their own security, their own mobility — social mobility as a whole goes down, inequality goes up, many measures of segregation go up," he says. "And ultimately a bill for this comes due. If you live in Arlington, Va., and if you move to Ann Arbor, Mich., or even Santa Monica, Calif., those places are more alike than ever before. But most importantly, segregation by income has gone up in virtually every part of this country. So wealthier people tend to live together more than before and so do poorer people. And this is bad for the country as a whole and we see a version of this in the last election where so many people are shocked by the candidate who actually won.”

 

Theatrically speaking, the fallout of this phenomenon of self-segregation are many and apparent. As pointed out in previous discussions and blog posts, American theatre suffers from an exclusionary problem. In recent studies 83% of theatre tickets were bought by white middle and upper class people which inevitably sends immediate shockwaves to what is actually put upon those stages in the first place. 

In her article, “In Praise of Melodrama,” Joan Holden analyzes the American theatre’s seeming aversion to the type of theatre that makes audiences “vocal…not just formula hisses and boos, but throaty murmurs and primal screams: the audience entering into the conflict. But most of us have never seen stage melodrama done well…they deplore the simplifications, the emotionalism, the seemingly cheap affirmations of good guy/bad guy conflict; think heroes and villains and happy endings are too predictable, too easy, fail to surprise artistically or make people think...these artists aversion to simple truths, the high value they place on complexity and difficulty, and the emotional flatness of the postmodern aesthetic not only confine the audience to economic and intellectual elites, but also tend to depoliticize our theater.”

 But it’s not surprising. Holden points out that the best producers of melodrama in the American landscape is the 24/7 news apparatus that consistently pushes a melodramatic narrative of good vs. evil, bad guy/good guy, hero and villain. This constant inundation of quasi-scripted political and social story-telling, bias and manipulation leaves their audiences (surprise! Mainly white, middle and upper class, (or in the case of fox news white lower middle class)) in a host of emotional states; enraged, exhausted, hopeless etc. 

  The theatre then, catering predominately to a privileged class of white intellectuals, serves to provide a form of escapism; a place where they go to not be challenged but to be placated and entertained in predictable fashion. 

   But all this we know. My question to all of you- or rather my request is this: do a little digging online and find us an example of a theatre in America identifying the cultural and socio-economic rift that the theatre tends to tread and the work they do to try and correct it. It can be a specific (recent) production or an overall mission but I want to know where the theatre’s are that are working to dismantle the troubling trend of self-segregation and are making it work through a sustainable business model. Thanks in advance for sharing!