Christopher Shinn, a playwright who underwent a below-the-knee amputation in his late 30s, discusses the limited depth that able-bodied performers bring to disabled characters and why actors with disabilities don’t get cast in these roles instead:
Able-bodied actors can listen to the disabled, can do research, can use imagination and empathy to create believable characters. But they can’t draw on their direct experience. That means that audiences will be able to “enjoy” them without really confronting disability’s deepest implications for human life. Often, one fears, that’s the point: Pop culture’s more interested in disability as a metaphor than in disability as something that happens to real people.
For example, in his review of Side Show, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood wrote, “Of course, in some sense, we all know what it’s like to feel self-divided, or alienated from the world, which is what makes ‘Side Show’ emotionally stirring.” Disabled characters are often seen as symbolizing the triumph of the human spirit, or the freakishness we all feel inside. That may be another reason disabled actors are overlooked—they don’t allow disability-as-metaphor to flourish as easily.
I may not have been much bothered by any of this until my own disability asserted itself. But now I know that the physical pain and challenges that come in the wake of disability, alongside the insensitivity and lack of understanding one encounters, are profound experiences that cannot be truly known until they are endured. Perhaps the worst feeling is when people avert their eyes. Even someone gawking is better than their looking away.
(Video: Daniel Day-Lewis as Irish poet Christy Brown, who suffered from cerebral palsy, in the 1989 film My Left Foot. He won an Academy Award for his performance.)
The Dish 