“At the Intersection of Disability and Drama: A Critical Anthology of New Plays” by John Michael Sefel

“Cripples ain’t supposed to be happy” sings Anita Hollander, balancing on her single leg and grinning broadly. This moment–from her multi-award-winning one-woman show, Still Standing–captures the essence of this theatre anthology. Hollander and nineteen other playwright-performers craftily subvert and smash stereotypes about how those within the disability community should look, think, and behave. Utilizing the often-conflicting tools of Critical Disability Studies and Medical Humanities, these plays and their accompanying essays approach disability as a vast, intersectional demographic, which ties individuals together less by whatever impairment, difference, or non-normative condition they experience, and more by their daily need to navigate a world that wasn’t built for them. From race, gender, and sexuality to education, dating, and pandemics, these plays reveal there is no aspect of human life that does not, in some way, intersect with disability.

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