Disabilities and Entertainment Rarely Come Together, Why?

posted on Jun 03 by Stacy in the Advocacy, Disability News, Opinion and Discussion category

There are 56 million people (approximately 20 percent of the population) with disabilities, yet in the entertainment industry, you rarely see the disabled portrayed as just people, without the need for a visual representation of the disability such as crutches or a wheelchair. So, the question must be asked: Why is it that disabled actors are not considered for a wide range of roles that don’t hinge on their disability?

In Glee, a non-disabled actor was cast to portray a paraplegic high school student, and Curb Your Enthusiasm did it twice. Of the over 600 characters on scripted comedies and dramas airing each season, few utilize the wealth of talent that lies within the disabled community.

Actor Robert David Hall, a double amputee who walks on two artificial legs, recently said, “It’s politically correct for everyone to say they support people with disabilities and there are talented people in every group, but the truth of the matter is in the numbers. Four years ago we commissioned a UCLA study and found that one-half of one percent of lines spoken on television is uttered by people with disabilities.”

It is not just television that falls short. In New York, deaf and hearing disabled actors held a protest during the casting of a hearing actor to play a deaf character in the off Broadway production of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. There is a long held misconception that disabled actors slow down production and increase costs, because of the accommodations that need to be made them.

Christine Bruno, a disability advocate at the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts and a theater actor with cerebral palsy, cites another issue that disabled actors face: sometimes seeing isn’t believing enough. She recalls attending an audition where “I was told to bring my crutches, because they wanted a visual representation of my disability. I don’t use crutches. The fact that I walk with an uneven gait was not enough for them.”

Chair of the Writers Guild of America-West Writers with Disabilities Committee, Allen Rucker is optimistic that younger audiences will view people with disabilities in a new light, regardless of the actor’s actual disability (or lack thereof): “We want the new generation to say, ‘yeah, you can have a guy in a wheelchair in a sitcom without ever having to talk about the wheelchair or focus on his disability.”