They were ready to meet the challenge
Artists with disabilities have long used the digital tools that are now centre stage
When Ophira Calof, a Toronto writer, comedian, singer and producer, found out her show “Literally Titanium” had been accepted into the 2020 Next Stage Theatre Festival, she was in hospital recovering from brain surgery.
Two days before she was to fly to Montreal to teach a course at the National Theatre School, lighting designer Kaileigh Krysztofiak had a recurrence of her multiple sclerosis symptoms that left her in so much pain and fatigue that even mundane tasks were impossible.
Canadian actor Dawn Jani Birley, who is deaf, was collaborating with a director in Helsinki, Finland, but wanted a more direct connection than the Video Relay Service offered over the phone.
All three of them responded as artists with disabilities tend to do when plans unexpectedly change: they found solutions. And those solutions involved digital tools that have become mainstream due to the physical distancing brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Krysztofiak began experimenting with teaching students over Zoom.
Birley combined the Video Relay Service with a visual conferencing service so her director could simultaneously receive her ASL translations and watch her sign.
Calof, who has a chronic illness and uses a wheelchair, enlisted a number of applications and contingency plans to communicate with her team.
The entire Canadian theatre industry is in crisis mode as it struggles with the question: how can we make art when no one can share physical space?
The shift to tools like livestreaming, Zoom play readings and digital broadcasts is largely commonplace for disabled artists in Canada, who collaborated across distances for myriad reasons before social distancing measures came into play.
For choreographer and dancer Patricia Allison, for instance, the impact of her MS on her performing career mirrors that of social distancing on non-disabled artists. She wrote about it for the magazine The Dance Current in an article entitled “Welcome to Our World.”
“You don’t realize what you have until it’s gone,” Allison said in an interview. Other artists have had to slow down since the pandemic began, which “is more of a pace that I exist within, which is really nice. But I’m constantly trying to nudge people to be like, yeah, when we go back to quote unquote normal, let’s remember it. Let’s remember the things that we weren’t able to do at a slower pace during the pandemic and that that is some people’s every day.”
For actor Yousef Kadoura, who is an amputee, collaborating with artists of different abilities has led to a deeper understanding of the end product. He’s an artist-in-residence with the Tangled Art + Disability non-profit, which promotes artists with disabilities in various media.
“The main benefit of the Tangled community … is that you realize that you have to use a whole wealth of different tools: ASL in rehearsal halls, transcription, recorded text for blind actors, protocols of identifying yourself when you’re speaking and saying when you’re done speaking, not overloading information, using the phone when someone has had enough screen time,” Kadoura said. “I think of it as kind of like music, with all the different elements coming together.”
It’s no surprise, then, that artists with disabilities have shifted to digital collaboration in the midst of the pandemic with relative ease.
“I’ve always relied on technology for communication and for access to communication. I would say that deaf people are very skilled in the use of technology, because it is part of our lives,” Birley said. “We have always been looking for solutions.”
“Everything that I build, whether it’s producing or writing or performing, there has to be an inherent element of adaptability because I create everything with an element of uncertainty,” Calof said.
Some artists, such as Vancouver dramaturge mia susan amir, have started sharing their knowledge of online collaboration with tutorials.
Amir, who describes herself as a “crip,” has been using digital tools to collaborate with other disabled and Indigenous artists for five years. I started using Zoom to collapse distance and create opportunities for those who were interested in asking the same questions as me,” she said.
But sharing her knowledge comes with a hint of bitterness. “The disabled community has been asking for livestreamed events for a long time … And so there’s a deep irony now, with the migration into virtual venues. It’s painful for many of us to see these alterations happening only now that everyone is impacted.”
Calof, too, has made requests over the past few years for comedy courses and performances to be made available online, with no luck.
“The feeling at the time seemed like online classes and online shows were a lesser version. And that’s something that I’ve always heard in regards to accessibility,” she said.
Some note that the shift to digital production hasn’t always meant more inclusiveness, at least for artists with disabilities.
“Just because you brought a class or a performance online doesn’t necessarily mean that accessibility has been captured,” said Shay Erlich of the Cyborg Circus Project, who is multiply disabled and uses a wheelchair. “One of the lessons that I hope we learn is that accessibility always has to be planned for, no matter what medium or forum that we’re working within. It doesn’t just magically happen.”
Still, these artists are hopeful that the pause in traditional performances will yield some valuable self-reflection for the industry — to consider what it makes, how it makes it and who it makes it for.
“To me, there is no longer any excuse for somebody saying that just because your body is unpredictable means that you can’t work,” Erlich said.
“When we go back to quote unquote normal ... let’s remember the things that we weren’t able to do at a slower pace during the pandemic and that that is some people’s every day.”
PATRICIA ALLISON CHOREOGRAPHER/DANCER “The disabled community has been asking for livestreamed events for a long time … It’s painful for many of us to see these alterations happening only now that everyone is impacted.”
MIA SUSAN AMIR DRAMATURGE “Everything that I build … there has to be an inherent element of adaptability because I create everything with an element of uncertainty.”
OPHIRA CALOF WRITER, COMEDIAN, SINGER, PRODUCER