Interact Theater

Interact Theater is the performing arts branch of the Minneapolis arts organization Interact Center. The first Interact Theater production took place in 1992 at The Southern Theater, located at 1420 S. Washington Ave in Minneapolis.

Interact Center for the Arts was founded in 1996, with both a visual arts and a performing arts branch, to provide space and paid opportunities for disabled artists.

Interact Theater stages new, original work devised by the company of performing artists, with support from guest artists as needed to fully produce the shows with sets, costumes, and lighting on a professional level. Every Interact production is a product of collaboration between disabled and non-disabled artists.

Theatre and other performing arts have an ableism problem. Like most ableism, the problem is systemic, meaning it's shot through the whole theatre industry. Theatre lacks representation of disabled characters, opportunity for disabled artists, and accessibility both onstage and off.

Providing paid opportunities for disabled artists to create theatre and work on a professional level, with professional artists, Interact Theater provides an example of theatre without the systemic ableism. Interact produces shows that include disabled performers, because those disabled performers helped create the show.

Disability representation in the performing arts is not great! 1 in 4 adults in the USA have a disability  according to the CDC , but not nearly 1 in 4 characters on screen or stage have a disability. GLAAD's  2019 Where We Are On TV report  counted just over 3% of characters on television as having a disability. The gap between that 3% representation of 25% reality is pretty huge!

Classic shows such as Richard III, The Elephant Man, The Miracle Worker, as well as more modern shows such as Wicked, are usually written by people without disabilities, as well as usually performed without disabled performers playing the disabled characters. Wicked's Nessarose, for instance,  has never been played by an actor who, like the character, uses a wheelchair. 

This problem is not unique to the stage; since 1987,  27 Best Actor or Actress Oscars have gone to actors playing disabled characters . In the entire history of the Academy Awards, only 2 Oscars have gone to openly disabled actors, the most recent being in 1986 when  Marlee Matlin won Best Actress  for her role as a deaf character in Children of a Lesser God.

Then, there's the fact that much of the representation on stage is...not good. Disability and deformity are used as a shorthand for villainy in plays ranging from Shakespeare to the wildly popular musical Phantom of the Opera.

When disabled people on stage aren't inherently villainous, they are often inspirational in a way disabled people find  objectifying  and uncomfortable. They're premised on disability as an inherently Bad Thing, something to be overcome.

It's not enough for Tiny Tim to be poverty-stricken and his father exploited; the audience can't truly find him both pathetic and adorable unless he needs a mobility aid.

Disabled performers face a reversal of this problem, often only being considered for roles that are explicitly written to be disabled characters. While this is great from a representation standpoint, it artificially limits the roles available to disabled performers. It puts disabled performers in a different category from able-bodied, neurotypical performers.

Disabled performers, like any performers, want to perform! Limiting the roles disabled people are allowed to play on the screen or the stage means fewer disabled performers can spend their time performing. It means audiences see disabled people in limited roles, and think that's all there is to disabled people and disability. And it discourages disabled actors and audiences from seeing themselves in their favorite shows.

In high school, I went to a drama magnet program. Over the course of four years, I was in twelve productions. My wheelchair-using grandmother came to see just one of these twelve shows, because that one experience was so unsatisfactory.

The wheelchair accessible seating was off to the extreme side of the stage, didn't connect to the lobby (or the restrooms), and had a separate entrance around the side of the building. Visibility and audio quality were poor, because that was not where the shows were designed to be seen and heard from. My grandma was very supportive, but she chose to encourage my other family members to take photos and videos rather than attend in person after that first show.

Sometimes this out-of-the-way space was used as part of the performance space in shows. Where would my grandma, or anyone else who needed accessible seating, have gone to watch those shows?

Sadly,  this is not an unusual experience . Theater seating is small, cramped, and often accessible only by stairs. Accessible seating is often far in the back of the house, or far to the side. Sometimes, like it was in my high school, the entrance isn't through the lobby at all, requiring disabled audience members to go through backstage spaces or outside the building to get to their seats.

Backstage spaces are even less of a priority to ensure accessibility than audience spaces. They are usually cramped, poorly-lit, and difficult to navigate. In many cases, these are older buildings that have been updated or renovated as technology advanced, or been repurposed into performance spaces, making each theater unique and uniquely confusing to navigate.

I have more than 5 years of professional experience working backstage in theaters around the Twin Cities. There is no reason a person who needs, for example, a wheelchair could not do the wardrobe repairs or help get actors dressed during a show the way I did…except the buildings where these jobs are performed are almost never physically accessible.

Even when they are architecturally accessible, the wide hallways and open spaces are almost always stuffed with trunks, clothes racks, equipment, cleaning supplies, and anything else the cast or crew might need during performances.

Many people think of "theatre" as: a script, written by a playwright, directed by a director, performed by performers. The playwright might be dead, the director is (usually) not a performer, the performers start with the text from the script. But that's only one type of theatre!

There's also:

• improvisational theatre
• experimental theatre
• devised theatre

Devised theatre is creating a piece from the ground up as a group, or improvising your way to a story everyone in the company wants to tell. It is an even more collaborative form of storytelling than classic, text-based theatre is.

Devised pieces are unique to each time, place, and group creating them. Even starting from the exact same prompt or theme can yield radically different results, depending on who is involved.

Instead of a company member being locked into a single role–writer, actor, director, designer–every company member is a little bit of all of those things, and anything else they are interested in, or the show needs.

Since Interact Theater's productions are original, devised work, each show they produce involves disabled artists in every aspect of every piece. From the very beginning, the people coming up with the ideas and implementing them are disabled, and working with disabled artists.

This approach, where not only are disabled people involved at every level of the production, but are literally always involved, lends itself very well to Interact's  stated mission of radical inclusivity . It's difficult to leave out or overlook people who are in the room for the entire artistic process!

It also means the artists creating work with Interact are not limited to certain prescribed roles—something that disabled people are all too used to.

Disability is isolating. Lack of accessibility may be literally isolating, but  social isolation  and ostracization is also a huge concern for disabled people. Rather than make this problem worse by remaining apart from the rest of the theatre community in the Twin Cities, Interact is firmly part of the professional theatre world.

Interact Theater stages shows in professional venues around Minneapolis used by other major Twin Cities theatre companies, so Interact's artists are working in well-known and historically significant spaces, like any other local theatre artists.

Interact brings in professional designers, technicians, and guest artists as needed for productions, so members of the Interact company of artists are working with other members of the local theatre community.

Both physically and socially, Interact is part of the local theatre community, not a wholly separate endeavor, as spaces for disabled people  can sometimes be .

Built in 1910, the Southern had  an eventful century , operating as a movie theater, a garage, and a restaurant, before being brought back to its theatrical roots.

In the 1970s, The Southern was the site of "Guthrie 2": an experimental theatre for the Guthrie, which was founded as a regional theater dedicated to artistic innovation, in contrast to the commercial pressures of Broadway

 The Lab  is a warehouse performance space in downtown Minneapolis, right next door to the Minnesota Opera. The space is used by a variety of local companies (Minnesota Fringe Festival, Guthrie, Minnesota Opera, Theatre Latte Da, The Moving Company) as well as hosting dance and burlesque shows.

A "black box" studio space within the new Guthrie building on the river. The Dowling is also used by the University of Minnesota Theatre BFA program for spring performances, as well as Guthrie experimental pieces.

Interact Theater is a worthwhile example to follow, providing paid opportunities for disabled artists. The way they create art and the way they interact with the larger Minneapolis theatre community displays a committment to their stated mission of inclusivity the way mere words cannot.

Interact could also provide a great resource for theatre artists looking to make the field more inclusive, or architects attempting to understand the needs of truly accessible artistic buildings, above and beyond the standards set by the ADA or other governing bodies. This is a company that has been doing the work for more than twenty years; these are people whose experience and advice on making inclusive theatre and accessible theaters is invaluable.

Shifting institutions and art forms can feel overwhelming, but looking at existing organizations like Interact is a good place to start.