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Mission | History
| Current Initiatives | |
Queering the Crip
Wednesday – August 20th, 2003 @ 4:00pm EST
An online roundtable
discussion, hosted by the Non-Traditional Casting Project, Inc.
included the following
participants:
Terry Galloway – Performance
Artist, Playwright and Filmmaker
Tallahassee, FL
Raymond Luczak – Writer,
Poet and Filmmaker
New York, NY
Judy Smith – Dancer and
Artistic Director of Axis Dance Company
Oakland, CA
Greg Walloch – Performer,
Stand-Up Comedian and Filmmaker
New York, NY
(led by)
John Killacky – Program
Officer for Arts and Culture at The San Francisco Foundation and
Filmmaker
San Francisco, CA
Wednesday – August 20th, 2003 @ 4:00pm EST
John
Killacky:
Thank you
all for gathering. I so admire your work. When the Non-Traditional Casting
Project contacted me about hosting an informal web chat, I immediately thought
of you four. You are trailblazers in the performing arts world as artists who
make great work and also happen to be disabled and queer. I want to talk about
all those aspects, but first a few introductions. Terry Galloway, let's start
with you.
Terry
Galloway:
I'm here
and uh listening.
John
Killacky:
Gender-bending
Shakespearean actor in Austin, performance artist in New York, theater founder
and director in Tallahassee, film and video maker. Not bad for being told in
school that a deaf person might consider costume design as a career in the
theater. You have been commissioned by Mark Taper Forum's Other Voices Project.
What are you developing?
Terry
Galloway:
I am finishing a play called In the House of the Moles-- it had been
produced as a work in progress by the Rude Mechs in Austin Texas
(they did Lipstick Traces). When I
took it to the Mark Taper it underwent a sea change.
John
Killacky:
How so?
Terry
Galloway:
I had long
wanted all of the characters (there are six -- a mother, four daughters and an
older male friend) to reflect my experience with disability. But I could never
find enough disabled actors to work on it with me. At The Mark Taper, Other Voices, there they
were. After the reading I took the sucker back and reworked it and got the play
I had been intending to write for god knows how many years. Now I have to find
the people to do it again. And I have no idea how hard or how easy that is
going to be.
John Killacky:
Did you have actors play their disability or did
the actor's disabilities inform your playwriting process?
Terry
Galloway:
What's funny is that I didn't have any specific
disability in mind--I wanted something that reflected the unexpected. And that
I did get. The actors did give me that. It was a kick in the butt to see
vaudeville routines performed by a guy in a chair and a woman with CP. Routines took on new life. The language
itself took on new life. It was exciting to see something at work besides the
same old same old. People who are not
disabled are sometimes hesitant or even fearful of asking disabled performers
what in fact their bodies are capable of doing. The non-disabled lower their expectations
rather than risk the exploration. At the Taper’s Other Voices it was
exciting to see what those disabled bodies could in fact DO-- and it was never
what we simply imagined those bodies were constrained to. It was a huge
release.
John
Killacky:
One other topic, one of your short videos was
recently shown at London's
Disability Film Festival. How was the festival?
[see also: London Disability Arts Forum]
Terry
Galloway:
The festival in
John
Killacky:
Greg Walloch, you too received an Other Voices
commission from The Mark Taper. Before you tell us about that project, let me
try to catch up with the multitude of your other projects. Your feature-length
documentary F**k the Disabled seems
to be in video stores everywhere. I loved your recent performance of White Disabled Talent at New
Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. Is the bit true about auditioning for
Sesame Street?
Greg
Walloch:
The title piece for the show White Disabled Talent was inspired by several audition experiences
I had as an actor. I blended them into one experience. The gist of the story is
that I was waiting to audition for the show Sesame
Street and overheard the casting director say "Send in the white
disabled talent..." Then I go on in the piece to explore that label in a
funny ironic way and embrace it in almost this near absurd fashion, ending the
piece exclaiming, "I want to become the most beloved disabled performer,
I'm going to kick that Christopher Reeves’s ass!"
John
Killacky:
One amazing thing for me is the audacity you
exhibit by performing in so many straight comedy clubs. Why inhabit these
spaces as an artist?
Greg
Walloch:
Well, because that is the world, you know? To
dissolve the separation. I'm rebellious
about groups of this and that, we're all folks.
John
Killacky:
Tell us about your new movie project Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? and
your Mark Taper commission.
Greg Walloch:
It's been great writing a multi-character piece for
The Mark Taper, different from my other work. It's not disability-focused per
se; it's been nice to write about other parts of myself, other parts of my
experience.
John
Killacky:
How so?
Greg
Walloch:
I look at all of my work that way... My whole
experience, what moves me, sometimes that relates directly to disability and
sometimes not. Will You Still Love Me
Tomorrow? is due to begin preproduction at the end of the year, it’s
a dark comedy and a love story about death. Everybody in it is relating to
dying in some way and how they love.
John
Killacky:
Greg, I am going to challenge you a bit. I have
seen the gleam in your eyes when you walk on stage using your two canes and are
so very outrageous and queer. Straight comedy clubs are not used to this. Admit
it, you like shocking those folks...
Greg
Walloch:
Believe it or not my goal is more about
“loving them”.
John
Killacky:
Ray
Luczak:
Thank you for your kind words on my
accomplishments. First off, Ghosted
is nearly done and my lawyer is shopping the film around for potential buyers.
As for Guy Wonder: Stories & Artwork,
the documentary is done. I need to translate it from American Sign Language
(ASL) into English for subtitles, and then it's coming out on DVD next
month. My fifth book, Snooty, is
coming out within two weeks. I will have three new plays opening in late
fall--two in NYC and one in Houston. And I'm under contract to turn in a rough
cut of my new documentary on Nathie Marbury, a fabulous deaf, black
storyteller, by end of this year.
John
Killacky:
You, Greg, and Terry should talk off-line about
film and video distribution.
Ray Luczak:
I'm also appearing in three new anthologies by end
of this year. Prior to this meeting, I decided to count how many new poems of
mine have been published in various places this year. 17!!! I was shocked at
how lazy I'd gotten in keeping track. And oh yeah, I'm writing a fiction serial
called Lansel for the Tactile Mind Weekly e-zine. It's
apparently so popular that the publisher has asked me to do another 30-week contract.
Thank God. I need the $$$. That's where I'm at right now.
John
Killacky:
How do your queerness and your deafness inform your
work?
Ray
Luczak:
Well, I've never hidden the fact that I'm Deaf or
gay in my work. Guy Wonder, for instance, is a deaf gay artist, but he doesn't
emphasize his gayness in the documentary. I think it's pretty clear in the
film, but I don't always think it HAS to be the focus. I know that the larger
Deaf community has occasional problems with openly deaf gay folks, but I find
that such homophobia is declining. Of course, the decline is never fast enough!
I was very proud of the fact that a hearing painter--who had been wanting to
get back into painting for years--felt inspired to go back to the easel after
reading my book Silence Is A Four-Letter
Word: On Art & Deafness, even though he had no connection with the Deaf
community other than the fact that he'd come across my book reviewed in OUT
Magazine. I think there's a place
for enabling disability not as a metaphor of how we can overcome our own
problems, but as a way of making it easier to see ourselves differently.
John
Killacky:
Terry, how about homophobia in the Deaf community,
any thoughts?
Terry
Galloway:
Yeah. It's all over the place but so is queerness,
You have your church-going good deaf people and then the others like Raymond
and me.
Ray
Luczak:
I see the Deaf community in three different groups,
actually. (Sorry to interrupt, Terry.) The first are the grassroots ASL-signing community.
The second is the oral Deaf community who don't sign for whatever reason. The
third are those who picked up ASL in
spite of having hearing families, etc. These tend to be the ones who are more
accepting of other people who are sexually different from them. The Deaf
community has many subcultures, just like the hearing gay community.
John
Killacky:
Terry, does this construct work for you?
Terry
Galloway:
In
John Killacky:
Judy Smith, Dancer and Artistic Director of Axis Dance Company in
Judy
Smith:
Yes, hard to believe.
John
Killacky:
Touring around the world, you receive wide critical
and popular acclaim. You just returned home from a residency at Bates College Summer
Dance Festival. How was that?
Judy
Smith:
It was an incredible experience. The fact that
integrated dance was being presented at a major festival was a huge step or
roll forward. There was only one student in the festival that was disabled and
used a chair. We did a community piece which brought in five more people with
various disabilities. Truthfully though, I’m not sure the rest of the
Bates faculty knew what we were about or what we did until the faculty improv
performance. Then they got to see how
someone in a chair can dance and move.
John
Killacky:
You once told me for the first ten years, your
company got sympathy reviews and were not taken seriously by the dance world.
Is that still true?
Judy
Smith:
No, I don't think it is true since we began
commissioning outside choreographers.
John Killacky:
Please talk about this.
Judy
Smith:
Our work is taken more seriously now. I think it is easier to review because
there’s a context for reviewing our work as it relates to our
choreographers’ other work. For
instance, Bill T. Jones’ piece for us can be seen and reviewed in the
context of Bill T.'s work, as well as in the context of Axis's work.
John
Killacky:
I know when
Judy
Smith:
Yes and No. They're both brilliant and figured out
a lot just through the process of creating and setting movement. Questions were answered as we went
along. Bill’s challenge was how to
approach unison. Stephen’s was how
to equalize us. That is what is exciting
to me—everyone gains.
John
Killacky:
Both Bill and Stephen told me the experience
expanded their own movement vocabulary.
I was kidding Greg about liking to work in those straight comedy clubs
and Raymond and Terry began discussing homophobia, what has it been like for
you as an out lesbian in the dance world?
Judy
Smith:
It's not something that comes up in the context of
our work usually. I don't look 'dyke' and disabled people aren't sexual, so why
would they be queer? I think that when
it does come up, it makes people rethink ideas about sex and disability in a
non-threatening way. My partner was at
Bates with us and she’s an obvious dyke.
Because it is a matter of fact for us, it just wasn’t an
issue—even for the community folks that were in our piece and had had
zero or little exposure to queers. They
all REALLY liked Iva!
Terry
Galloway:
Are we the pet for whom they feel a sudden
inexplicable desire?
Ray
Luczak:
As long as they don't have to dwell on what we like
to do behind closed doors, we remain non-threatening to everyone.
Terry Galloway:
I liked what Judy suggested about disability
defanging or preempting criticism about queerness. It makes sense. If you don't imagine someone being sexual,
you can't be threatened by their sexuality.
The idea of lesbianism, for instance, becomes more abstract, more an
issue of wonder-- as in wow DISABLED people can actually be LESBIANS!
Judy
Smith:
I'm always thrilled when we work with other
lesbians in the dance world
Terry
Galloway:
Well, the deaf have a reputation for being sexy,
that's what I got from my other disabled friends when they were discussing a
deaf man for whom they had the hots.
Ray
Luczak:
Really? *rolling eyes* Bring 'em on! I know I have experienced
different kinds of prejudices as a Deaf gay writer here in New York City.
John
Killacky:
Do tell us more...
Ray
Luczak:
One kind of prejudice I've always had to deal with
as a writer comes from the literary scene. You have to sound "smart" and
"sophisticated." Even though I can speak very well to be understood
by almost anyone, I can't always speak all those "fancy" words, even
though I use them in my writing. So at these literary soirees, they don't take
me seriously. It's as if this guy with this nasal speech seems like a misfit
here. The irony is that most writers ARE misfits, for why else would they feel
compelled to write, as if they are trying to connect with other misfits out
there? But no, here in New York, the literary scene can be incredibly cliquish.
Maybe the fact that I still don't have an agent or that I've had five books
published means nothing to them. I'm not bitter. I've given up on trying to be
one of them.
Terry
Galloway:
Ray they should mean nothing to you, that's one of
the things I find myself feeling more and more aggressive about.
Ray
Luczak:
That's from the hearing literary community.
Terry
Galloway:
Of course.
John
Killacky:
Greg, I know you have lots to say about this topic
of sex and desire.
Greg
Walloch:
I've always been pretty in touch with my sexuality
in my work and in my personal life.
John
Killacky:
But how has the world treated you?
Greg
Walloch:
Love, sex, I don't have any really terrible stories
about being a sexual outcast; it's probably because I'm pretty easy.
John
Killacky:
Sorry for the digressions, this issue of how the
world sees people with disabilities and sexuality is quite interesting. Since
we are here with the Non-Traditional Casting Project, any sensitivity training
you want to impart to casting directors?
Terry
Galloway:
I am pretty
sick of our cultural obsession with sexuality.
It's isn't even an interesting sexual obsession. It can't be interesting when it's so
predicated on the idea of "perfection." And it's hard not to think of
that obsession with perfection as male because after all it is mostly men who
do the casting. More interesting to me
is the variety of bodies out there in the world.
Judy Smith:
I think the first issue is always disability for
casting directors.
Terry Galloway:
You are right about that Judy. Like I said earlier, most non-disabled people
aren't imaginative enough to regard disability as a performance option rather
than a directorial obstacle.
Ray
Luczak:
They need to realize that disabled people are part
of everyone's lives, and that by not including them every so often in projects,
they are doing EVERYONE a grave disservice. We all know that, but do they
*really* understand that? Truth is, there aren't enough enlightened producers
and directors, period. I thought it was
wonderful that the director cast some disabled people to work with stars like
Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer in I Am
Sam.
Terry Galloway:
I was thinking how Judy said that Bill and Stephen
got ideas from working with different bodies. That needs to be made into the goal somehow-- a
way to reinvent the excitement of theater, performance, film.
Ray
Luczak:
I think a disabled person can play a non-disabled
person ... without even having to call attention to their own disability.
Terry Galloway:
I Am Sam would have been better if Sean Penn could have
been the supporting actor rather than the star
Ray Luczak:
I agree with you on that, Terry, but still, it is progress.
A wheelchair mother is there and gets around, but her wheelchair is not the
issue.
Judy
Smith:
Yes, it has happened for everyone we work with.
Terry
Galloway:
But the world still is a stubborn little shit and
still persists in not really seeing its own desires.
Ray
Luczak:
Right on, Terry! I was afraid that Sean would mock
the disabled through his performance, but I felt he didn’t. On the other hand, The Other Sister made me cringe. Ouch.
Greg
Walloch:
I've done commercial work, leaning on a desk,
seated, etc. where you don't know I'm disabled. Also I've been asked to play
"more disabled."
Terry
Galloway:
I love that.
I've been on crutches the last four months and man, I've felt so put
upon to play more disabled.
Ray
Luczak:
Whose definition of "more disabled" are
we talking about? The temporarily-abled have a definition very different from
ours.
Greg Walloch:
In a recent film, I'm in a chair and my speech is
different. It's fine with me, it's like
doing any character.
Ray
Luczak:
I think most of us see our own disability as just
another way of living, not something to make a movie-of-the-week about.
Terry
Galloway:
Raymond that was a very interesting comment.
"We see our own disability as just another way of living." Actually I
read it as "just another way to make a living." So the Freudian slip
interests me as well.
Ray
Luczak:
For instance, in my film, Ghosted, 95% of the dialogue is in ASL. Some of the
characters are deaf; some hearing. But do they discuss Deaf issues or call
attention to the fact that they are deaf or use ASL
with each other? Nope. They have a bigger problem: They have a ghost in the
house! The script could've been done by hearing actors, but I think ASL and
deafness add a nice dimension to the usual conventions of the supernatural
genre.
Terry
Galloway:
I feel that in some ways I've been able to cash in
on my disability. One of the interesting things I found out in London is that
there is money there for film and video works about disability; more money than
for people who are not disabled! That is a turnabout and I revel in it.
Ray
Luczak:
That's great. Terry, do email me more info about
that!
John
Killacky:
How about from a queer perspective: Why is Will
played by a straight man and will he ever have a sleepover like Grace does?
Ray
Luczak:
Or what about Jack? He's a lot more nelly and he
doesn't seem to have a boyfriend of any kind. It's implied that nelly-ness is
not sexy enough to attract a nice fella. I've occasionally wondered if
effeminacy is a different kind of disability within the gay community.
Terry Galloway:
That made me laugh, Ray.
John
Killacky:
Greg, I know the producers shied away from titling
your film F**k the Disabled when it
was first released. Why?
Greg
Walloch:
Marketing.
Ray
Luczak:
Oh yeah, Greg--please make sure that your next film
is subtitled and/or captioned for us Deaf people. I was very disappointed that F**k The Disabled was not captioned.
Greg
Walloch:
I know... Me too.
Ray
Luczak:
That's why I didn't buy it. Please tell your
producers that there are some 25 million Americans with hearing loss problems.
The numbers will increase as the baby boomers age.
Greg
Walloch:
It’s funny how little say I had over a
product that I am so featured in. All I can say is I fought hard for subtitles
and in the end it was not for me to decide and was about money. It was
challenging to work on F**k The Disabled.
In the end there were some things I
didn't love about it, but you create work and let it go live the creative life
it's going to live.
Terry
Galloway:
This is the tip of the iceberg, John. I think we
could go deeper into these discussions. I don't know how that can be managed
but I would have for instance liked to have heard even more from Judy. I hope
we can talk even more about the things we can do to make alternative or non-
traditional casting alluring. We have to
make it appealing or rather reveal how appealing it can be, how reflective of
life itself, of the larger community itself, how it can reawaken a moribund
sensibility.
Judy
Smith:
I must
sign off now. Thanks all.
Greg Walloch:
Thanks all.
Ray
Luczak:
See ya, Greg.
Terry
Galloway:
I wish we could have talked longer. Take care,
guys. Bye.
John
Killacky:
Love and hugs and thanks for being together.
Ray
Luczak:
So glad that we were able to get together for
however short a time we could.
Terry
Galloway:
Love to you too, John. Thanks Ray and bye Greg. And Judy, we hardly
knew ye damn it, bye.
Moderator John R. Killacky is the
program officer for Arts and Culture at The San Francisco
Foundation. His video Crip Shots features performative portraits
of Judy Smith, Greg Walloch, and Terry Galloway. He co-edited the anthology Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their
Stories that includes writing by Greg Walloch and Raymond Luczak.
To find out more about these artists,
please contact them at:
Terry Galloway: TLGalloway@aol.com
John R. Killacky: jrk@sff.org
Raymond Luczek: www. raymondluczak.com
Judy Smith: www.axisdance.org
Greg Walloch: www.gregwalloch.com