Curious Antecedents
Neurodiversity in Theatre
(Read from the first post at the bottom first and work up)
(Read from the first post at the bottom first and work up)
For an obviously and openly declared neurodivergent person to exist on stage, more work in showing openly disabled people had to be done. Many of American playwright John Belluso’s plays focused on life with disability. Belluso’s 2005 play Rules of Charity focuses on the life of a wheelchair bound man with cerebral palsy (THEATRE, 2003). Cerebral Palsy mainly impacts physical movement but can also impair reasoning and cognition which can also create language difficulties ("Cerebral Palsy”, 2017). This play also highlights having to rely on a caretaker. In this play Monty, the man with cerebral palsy, relies on his daughter Loretta as a caretaker. In Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Christopher also relies on his mother in a different way than a neurotypical 15 year old would. The Rules of Charity, no doubt made an impact on exposing people to who sound and act a little different due to neurological differences and the realities of people who are caretakers of adults or near adults because after opening at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco it had an off broadway run from May 26, 2007 to July 24, 2007. Additionally, unlike Curious Incident, this play’s author, John Belluso, may not know the neurological struggles of cerebral palsy but is wheelchair bound due to Camurati-Englemann Disease, so he knows first hand the struggles of a physical disability (Shinn, 2015). A review at the time talks about how the theatre utilized for the off broadway run is significant because Theater by the Blind intentionally hires disabled alongside able bodied crew, very appropriate to the show. This theatre was already doing work including disabled people not just in the audience but in the production itself (Genzlinger, 2007). Curious Incident served as the next intermediate step of actually getting yet another neurodivergent character on stage. Hopefully, moving forward all the actors playing Christopher and those writing on neurodivergent characters will themselves be neurodivergent.
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