'Cripping Up': The Casting Conundrum in John Belluso's Pyretown

a workshop with

Carrie Sandahl

Thursday, May 25, 2006
Board Room, Stanford Humanities Center
4:00-6:00 PM

Respondent: Rebecca Richardson, Graduate Student in English, Stanford University

Background reading for Professor Sandahl's workshop is the play Pyretown by John Belluso and Professor Sandahl's essay, "Black Man, Blind Man: Disability Identity Politics and Performance." For an electronic copy of the reading, please contact Julie Minich at jminich@stanford.edu.

Abstract: This workshop explores how identities matter by untangling the thorny issues of casting in the new disability theatre whose aim is to foreground the lived experience of disability. In particular, I will focus on a case study of the play Pyretown by the disabled playwright John Belluso, who passed away early this year. The play centers on the romance between Harry, a twenty-something disabled man, and Louise, a middle-aged impoverished single mother. Their relationship is forged as they battle an uncaring and ridiculously bureaucratic HMO, embodied through the persona of the third character, Rebecca, a pregnant physician employed by the HMO, who is an unwilling, but effective gatekeeper to services. Each character's identity position serves as a basis of knowledge for temporary, albeit ambiguously effective, coalition building. Because Belluso himself was (and still is) closely tied to the disability rights movement and his message is so closely tied to disability identity, the identity of the actor cast as Henry has come to matter a great deal. While Belluso expressed clear preference for casting a disabled actor in the role, Henry has been performed by non-disabled actors, a choice that has been met with disappointment, leading some to charge non-disabled actors with "cripping up," a pejorative term used to describe the practice of non-disabled actors playing disabled characters (and that references the outdated practice of white actors "blacking up" to play African-American characters). I will explore how this controversy is played out amongst the disability activist and artistic communities, producers of the play, the popular press, and even in recent memorial services for the playwright himself. This exploration reveals ways in which "non-traditional" casting practices need revision when disability identity is taken into account.

Carrie Sandahl is an Associate Professor in the School of Theatre at Florida State University. Her research and creative activity focus on disability and gender identities in live performance, including theatre, dance, and performance art. She is co-editor, along with Philip Auslander, of Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance (University of Michigan Press 2005), an interdisciplinary, international collection of essays in disability performance studies. Her award-winning, thirteen-minute video short entitled The Scary Lewis Yell-A-Thon, a 2004 collaboration with deaf performance artist Terry Galloway, has played at film festivals internationally and aired on television stations in Canada and Australia.

Rebecca Richardson is is a first-year graduate student in the Department of English at Stanford University.