
All the World’s a Stage: Accessibility and Theatrical Spaces
By RightsViews Staff Writer Carina Goebelbecker
Theater is a heartbeat of community. Theaters are a microcosm of society, situating audience members within entrenched social and cultural dynamics, while allowing them to imagine and empathize with characters onstage. Despite 26% of adult Americans having some type of disability, theaters are traditionally not accessible to disabled people, an extension of the challenges disabled folks face when navigating their daily routines. If all the world’s a stage, it should be an accessible one.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is one of the most prominent pieces of legislation relating to disability. The ADA National Network defines disability as a “physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.” However, disability is more contextual. In the journal article “Disability Worlds,” theorists Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (2013) define disability as “created by the social and material conditions that ‘dis-able’ the full participation of a variety of minds and bodies...the result of negative...