Crip, Arts: Community Trajectories and Agendas

Abstract:The author reflects on hir coming to identify as physically and cognitively disabled, making performance work concerning these identities and communities, the influence of Sins Invalid’s projects, challenges of securing arts funding while immigrating to Canada, and the activisms of developing disability-centred arts in smaller cities, of bridging ‘professional’ and ‘community arts,’ of increased training for disabled theatremakers onstage and offstage, and of amplifying improvements in working conditions industry-wide. Sie also discusses challenging paradigms of disabled relationships to desire and consent, of simplified narratives and conventional modes of staging our theatre, and hir goals for prioritizing work co-developed in local communities that experiments and explores.