Neurodiversity & Mental Health in Theatre

Neurodiversity & Mental Health in theatre, a conversation with Alia Ettienne, Emerjade Simms, and Victoria Urquhart.

Emerjade Simms is a Jamaican-Canadian actor and storyteller. She is a graduate of the Acting program at the University of Windsor and holds a BFA degree. Emerjade is also a 2016/17 graduate of the Mechanicals program at Factory Theatre. In her career as an actor so far, she has worked with many wonderful people and companies. Select theatre credits include Peter Pan (Bad Hats/Soulpepper), School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Obsidian/Nightwood), Wounded Soldiers (4th Line), The Bird Killer (Let Me In). Television credits include Forbidden, Fear They Neighbor, See No Evil and Paranormal 911. Emerjade enjoys napping in her down time and thanks her family for inspiring her daily.

Twitter: @emerbabe
Instagram: @em.er.jade

Alia Ettienne is a theatre writer, actor, performer and facilitator from Toronto, ON. Ettienne is of Afro Caribbean descent which often influences her performances and writing. Initially, she studied Performance at Sheridan College, moving on to explore Creative Writing and Arts Marketing. Her first solo piece, YellowZoned, premiered in The 2016 Toronto Fringe Festival, remounting in Hamilton,ON on two separate occasions. This led to her being featured in Hamilton’s View’s Magazine. Her creative wellness program, Chill N Do Art, has been running for a total of four years. This workshop series then inspired her to start the Creative Coping Kits Initiative, which attracted the attention of Toronto blog She In The City. Currently, she is most focused on The Creative Coping Kits Initiative, and writing her second full length piece Allow For Release: The Xiety Complex.

www.aliaettienne.com
**Instagram: @**its_aliaj

Victoria Urquhart is a queer, triple-invisibly-disabled neurodiverse artist hailing from Caledon, living and working professionally as an actor, director, artistic director of the Spur-of-the-Moment Shakespeare Collective and all around creator in theatre and film across Toronto and Ontario. Favourite credits include acting in Chloe Whitehorn’s Dressing Amelia, directing Theatre Orangeville’s 2019 TYA production of Treeboy and the fringe production, _The Girl In The Photograph. _Tune in to find her playing Vivian in the debut episode of Web of Darkness on T&E this spring.

Twitter: @gnitenet
Instagram: @g_nitenet

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Transcript

Welcome to episode 299 of Stageworthy. I’m your host, Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast about people in Canadian theatre featuring conversations with actors, directors, playwrights, and more.

Episode 299 means that the 300th episode is next week. I’ve got something really special planned for this episode, so make sure to tune in next week. And if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please consider supporting it.

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All your purchases and tip jar donations go towards Stageworthy and help me continue to bring you great conversations in Canadian theatre. And if you can’t buy from the store, consider rating and reviewing the show. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, you can leave a review right in the podcast app.

And if you don’t listen on Apple Podcasts, you can still review the show by going to podchaser.com, searching for Stageworthy, and rating the podcast there. Thank you for listening, and thank you for your support. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at stageworthypod, and you can find the website with the archive of all 299 episodes at stageworthypodcast.com. And if you want to drop me a line, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at philrickaby, and my website is philrickaby.com. My guests this week are Emmerjade Simms, Alia Ettienne, and Victoria Urquhart.

They joined me to talk about neurodiversity and mental health in theatre. So just to get us started here, just to give us a little bit of context for the conversation. The rehearsal hall and the theatre industry, for all of the, I mean, there’s great, there’s bad, there’s terrible things, there’s racism, there’s other things, but as far as people who are both neurodivergent or who have mental illness, theatre can be a very difficult and trying place to work in, because you often, it’s not, it’s not constructed for you.

The rehearsal hall and the rehearsal process is often not constructed for you. Is that, in your mind, the three of you, Emmerjade, Alia, and Tori, do you agree with that statement? Or do you disagree? It depends on the space that the team creates, I find. There are some rooms where I’m comfortable sharing what’s happening with my brain, and there are other rooms where I hide all of my illness at all times and cry when I get home.

So it really depends for me. Hmm. I’ve, I haven’t had great experiences, so I can’t deny that a neurological disorder means that there always is going to be an underlying sense of uneasiness for you, period.

There’s always a risk of a reaction that you’re not ready for. There’s always the idea of something giving you anxiety that you just wish didn’t, that thing that pops up that, that throws you for a loop, you know, depending on the individual. Those things can make the workplace, especially in something like performance, like theater, where a lot of it is pulling from self.

So on the one hand, you have folks saying, be vulnerable. And on the other, you know that you have this secret, this underlying uneasiness that you are just trying to hold. So for myself, you know, as PC as some folks claim to be, in the handful of times that my disorder has shown up, I’ve not been treated that well on, on the grand scheme of things.

I haven’t necessarily had great reactions or a lot of empathy. I think that a lot of, a lot of the go-to phrasing right now is, well, is my brain’s just built differently and the world didn’t, and society didn’t, society was not built for my brain or, or for other brains than this neurotypical brain. And I find myself constantly wondering what the neurotypical brain is because, oh God, here we go.

I can’t believe I’m saying this. I mean, every, every brain’s makeup, every, every human’s chemical makeup is different. You want to, let’s go to the, the stereotypical phrasing, every brain is a snowflake.

And I, I guess I say that, but I, I think that, I think that it’s so important for folks to remember that when we’re talking about these spaces being built for neuro, neurodivergence, we’re talking about, we’re not talking about just accommodations. We’re talking about needs and individual needs of, of each artist that enters the space. And I also hear a lot of artistic leaders right now having the conversation, which I think is, is spot on that.

How do we, how do we create a safe space for artists to get vulnerable? And is that possible in this time? And I look at neuro, neurodiversity and I look at my experiences and I would say, yeah, that’s, I don’t, I don’t think I’ve entered any one space that has fully been able to make it safe for my neurodivergence to pop up. And I know that there are so many well-meaning folks out there who, who are trying to learn about it and work with me. But I don’t think we’re quite there.

Tori, there’s a phrase that you’ve used and that phrase was accommodations rather than what you need. And I think that it’s the, the neurotypical mindset is, ah, I need to make accommodations for this, this person. And when we’re doing that, we’re not actually, we’re considering, oh, we’re going to do them a favor.

We’re going to do this thing for them. Sure. We’ll make, we’ll make an accommodation for them rather than looking at, at, at, like you said, the need.

And I think it’s a mindset and the word itself, accommodations, which is, we is used, you know, schools use it, um, for, for people who have disabilities for that sort of thing. And it’s, it’s a word that’s not particularly helpful because again, the attitude is we’re sort of doing them the favor rather than, than making a space that fulfills a need. I wonder if, like, can we get is ultimately if, if there was a way down the road, if we can get away from even the word accommodation and so that we can talk about people’s needs before we even get into the rehearsal process.

I had a conversation a few weeks ago, um, where we talked about, you know, sitting down as a group in the rehearsal hall. And before we even start digging into the text and trying to talk about what do you need or what do you want to get from this rehearsal process? And if we could actually say what we need in order to succeed in the rehearsal hall out of the gate, then maybe we could create a better rehearsal hall overall. I something, something that you said, like, triggered an immediate response in me is that, like, what is neurotypical? And I heavily feel that neurotypical happens because of colonialism.

And that is who set the standard of what whose brain should be what and how you’re supposed to be, how you’re supposed to look, how you’re supposed to act. And like, even the rehearsal hall structure of theater is so colonized. And like, not everyone can work in the structure of theater that everyone kind of follows and does these days.

And like, even even like making the suggestion of a slight change that could make it easier on people feels like you’re doing something really wrong and that you are sullying the art and sullying the purity of theater. And that is just, like, really sad. But we all kind of need to get on the same page of, like, what we can all do to help each other and how, like, these thoughts and structures are harming us more than helping us.

Because if we’re harmed in the hall, or even before, or even on stage, we don’t produce our best work, and therefore the work suffers. So then the art suffers in the first place. And the whole point is that we want to create really great art that people engage with, right? Theater, to me, is often and has been very stuck.

And it’s colonial, like you said, it’s colonial with the idea of we have our hierarchy, and we do this because this is how we’ve always done it. And this is how my teachers taught me to do it. This is how my teachers’ teachers did it.

This is how we do it. And it’s like, if we’re only ever looking back at the way it’s always been done, how do we ever hope to create something new? And that goes for the art, that goes for what happened, that goes for the rehearsal process as well. Artistic directors, are you listening? I will put this one out there.

I think the conversation lacks the honesty of the question, what does it look like? At the end of the day, when we have our disorders, they’re all so individual. They all show themselves in different ways within a person. So the idea of creating a space where, again, beyond accommodation, it’s more of an awareness of how these spaces are affecting the people, the actors, the performers, period.

And I just wonder what would be put in place that wouldn’t need to be tweaked. There are always, there are probably going to be certain things, say, for example, around time constraint. That’s a massive one.

The idea that how quickly you can pick up on something and you are reprimanded so quickly that I’ve had the experience of, all right, I know this time I’m going to make sure to do this thing. And the next time I’m going to make sure to add this thing. And you’re building onto yourself so you know by, or at least for myself, you would know by the end of, okay, I’ve done it three times now.

That’s a mistake I’m not doing anymore. And you allow yourself as a performer to work through that. But when there’s no space to work through that, and instead of someone having a personal conversation with me, instead of, you know, someone on those breaks saying, hey, this is a piece that I really need you to work on, because the choreography needs to be tighter, things like that in an empathetic way will change the way that we interact with the space.

Because then you’re going to go to someone and say, hey, this step is a little bit tougher because I’m dealing with X, Y, and Z today. I may want to go over this again. And I’ve had times where I’ve said, you know, I’ll add an extra rehearsal time.

I’ll go and talk to the other actors and work with them and gotten a solid middle finger. And these are the places that are so open and so free and organic. And yet they still steep themselves within this structure.

So I think it’s the idea of what would it then look like? The conversation is necessary, but what are then the steps that we’re taking? Because for myself, when someone says, okay, so how can we accommodate your needs? I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know how. And I almost won’t know how until, until something is messed up or until I’m, confused, so to speak. And that’s tough.

But in that same vein, I think it’s also doubting that I’m as dedicated as someone else because my disorder comes into play. One of the things that you mentioned, Aliyah, is about time. And in our rehearsal halls, the idea that we’re going to create a show in two weeks is number one, it’s pretty ridiculous that we think that, oh, we can create this, this show fully and realize it in two weeks, which obviously we can’t.

I know people who are like, they, you know, their first equity gig, they were told, oh yeah, yeah. Rehearsal is we get the blocking down, we get the lines down. We worry about character in performance.

And I think that’s such bullshit anyway. But when we’re dealing with the idea of, of neurodivergence or people’s brains working in a, in a way that is, that is not neurotypical, then trying to hold to that two week notion is again, pretty ridiculous to expect from people. I, I will say this.

And again, there are some folks who they only want to work in the crunch time because they may be bored after a month. So that’s what I mean by it’s like, how, how would we create a space that is consistently accommodating to all of those in the space that may not be neurotypical. I am not neurotypical, even when I didn’t know I wasn’t neurotypical.

So I don’t know how those people’s brains work. And I think about that in reverse though, if someone was, if I’m working of my own accord and I’ve worked with someone who is very type A and I have so much respect for them, I loved working with them, but I also couldn’t stand it because I felt like I couldn’t fully create. I respected them.

I was floored by their work ethic, but I don’t feel like I did my best work because I wanted to be barefoot and I wanted to stop and eat snacks every 15 minutes. And to this other person, it was like, you’re not working. You’re not doing anything.

Why are you sitting down? Why aren’t you trying to memorize the blocking? And for myself, I’m like, why are we doing blocking? I don’t even know what the piece is about. Hmm. Yeah.

There’s such a, um, like you mentioned earlier about the, the, you know, it’s all well and good to say what do you need, but you don’t know what you need until you need it. Right. And I think that sort of goes to the neurotypical rehearsal hall because in so many times we we’ve decided how we’re going to work.

It’s like a box. This is, this is the box in which we will work. And we don’t dare deviate from that.

And if somebody needs to come and say, I need to change the way that we’re working, that’s like to, to some people that’s like impossible. We have to tear down that construct of, of no, we can only work in this one way. It all comes back to like, I think flexibility ultimately.

Hmm. That’s a huge one. That’s a huge one.

And there’s also like, I know that people have budgets that they have to fulfill and timed constraints because of the budgets and like a lot of money goes into productions and a lot of time and effort on the part of like the people on the not creative side, but on the creative side, it feels like a lot of pressure all the time. And like, if you can’t, it feels like you are going to never be hired again. If you can’t get it together in the way that they want you to.

And then you push yourself really, really hard. You get frustrated with yourself. You like beat yourself up when you can’t get something right.

And these are things that you normally do like in the world anyway, but then there’s extra pressure when you’re doing it, when it comes to your work and it doesn’t ever feel good. And then you come home and you’re like, wow, that was, that was a terrible day. And I’m a terrible artist and I’m never going to work again.

I guess this is over anyway. Let’s go to sleep at three in the morning to be back at the hall for 10 a.m. Yeah. And definitely the idea of the one time that my disorder fully showed itself in regards to performance.

I just kind of felt like I was not capable of doing that type of work. And I did step back because it’s well, who wants to do something that they think they’re bad at? It’s one thing to be enjoying yourself and someone says, I think you suck. And you’re like, foof, this is, I love this.

But when you go into a space and you feel incapable as an individual, you got to take a step back and wonder why you were doing that thing in the first place, because apparently you ain’t nobody. And that’s a tough one. That put me in a different mindset for quite a while in regards to just performance in general, because I am a sensitive person.

I don’t need someone cussing me out because I put my step in the wrong direction. I need not those problems. And it seems unavoidable.

I find that especially right now, especially theater companies are looking, there’s this small opening that has started and hopefully, like we’re all hoping that it expands, but it’s for neurodiversity and for folks operating within visible disabilities. But I’m finding that it’s going very much off of you have to come to our language. And you have to explain what you need and how you work in our language.

And it’s got to fit in our way. And you’ve got to show us how we can adapt to work with you. And meanwhile, the thing that I’m learning is I’m six years in, seven years into realizing that I’m even operating with invisible disabilities.

And only this year did I learn that I’m working with not one, but three. And with that, I don’t have the entire language to say what I need, let alone to recognize that these are things that can be met. I have gone through interviews and auditions.

Also, just a small caveat here, or not caveat, but a small note, our needs change from space to space, whether it is technologically or online or in an interview or in an audition, or just because I operate with one disability, for example, does not mean that the needs of that disability are going to change from each space that I go into. It’s going to be impacted in a different way each time. But I digress.

Putting the onus on me to articulate what my needs are, going into any particular situation where I am being assessed as I go, and let’s face it, whenever we go into any creative space right now, every working opportunity is also an audition in and of itself. We’ve been taught that time and time again. Because of that, I’m getting judged based on how I can articulate my needs, and I’ve never been taught what that language to articulate my needs was, let alone that I need that.

I only just recently learned that I can ask for questions to be asked of me in advance so that I can process them. I only recently learned that I can say, hey, actually, your audition slots are 15 minutes each. My brain can’t work that fast.

I need the first five minutes just to process the space that I’m working in, which means I only really have about 10 minutes to audition for you. And I mean, I’m not saying 15 minutes as any specific theater company, just to put out there, because I’m grateful for every audition that I get. And a lot of them do tend to be around the 15-minute mark.

I say that as a general, like, usually you get 15 minutes, but for folks working with different cognitive differences, we need the first five minutes to clock. If it’s a technological space, okay, am I really distracted by seeing myself? Am I seeing multiple people at once? What is that doing to my brain? If I’m in a physical space, are there fluorescent lights? Is that making a really loud sound? Are there lights that are just too bright? How many people are sitting behind the desk? Who do I focus on with that? Because I can only process the, for example, the social cues and what’s going on on people’s faces one at a time. Or I just apply a general glaze, but then I can’t answer questions well.

Like, these are all different impacting factors that can be accommodated and can be assessed to make a more accessible space, but expecting individuals, there we go, I’m back on track now, but it can’t automatically be expected of individuals to just go in and take that leadership role. I’m really encouraging a lot of theaters right now to actually give examples and say, hey, we have done these kinds of accommodations before. Would you like to email us? Because a lot of them right now are just saying, hey, email us with accommodation needs.

And as an access point, that just intimidates the hell out of us because we don’t know if you can meet our needs. And we don’t even know if the needs that we have are worth talking about or if that’s going to be held against us based on the education that this XYZ theater has. End of thought.

That one. That one. Being held against.

Yes, Emma Jade. Yeah, exactly. Same.

Because one thing about artists that we know and why we hustle so hard is that we are so replaceable. And that’s why we work as hard as we do to stay in the spaces that we’re in. But the minute I’m like, I have an issue, then it’s like, no, we’re not even going to bother dealing with that because that might be a problem down the line.

You know what? Let’s fire her. Let’s get somebody else in who’s proven themselves. They may not be as in-depth with their work, but they’ll get the job done and then we’ll call it a day.

They’re reliable. And I think people would rather have reliable like 98% of the time versus unreliable for 5%. Yeah.

And like, I’ve been fired and they told me, yeah, I’ve been fired and they told me, like, you’re unreliable. I told him, like, I have a doctor’s note. Like, I just need to maybe cut down my hours.

Oh, you’re unreliable. Yeah, I’m sorry to hear, Emma Jade. We have such a, in theater in general, we have such a, theater in general has difficulty with the idea of self-advocacy.

We’ll talk about it, but don’t actually do it. Don’t actually tell us what you need. Like, we’ll talk about, you know, advocate for yourself.

But as soon as somebody advocates for themselves, whether they’re in a position where they’re being harassed in the rehearsal hall or after rehearsal, or they’re, they’re trying to say what they need because of the way that their brain works, these things make you difficult. And these things make you not desirable as a performer, regardless of the work that you do and the amazing thing that you do on stage. It’s at the root of, of the way that theater works.

It’s that thing that we’re taught from theater school, don’t rock the boat. And that’s, that gets in the way of self-advocacy. And it’s, it’s one of the core things that needs to change in the rehearsal hall, in the offices, in the, in the, in the workshops, everywhere that we go in theater, it’s something that does need to change.

The amount of life I have missed because of theater school, the amount of life I have missed because of theater school, and sometimes theater, because I simply just didn’t, I didn’t know how to speak up for myself. And I didn’t feel like I could, I didn’t feel emboldened to, I didn’t know if support was in place to this day still shakes me. And like, even this conversation right now, I’m, I know it’s going to be posted and I’m like, oh, I really hope that person who I haven’t worked with yet, isn’t listening to this and thinking that I’m just going to make a big fuss if something goes wrong.

And they’re just like, not going to want to hire me. Cause like, that shouldn’t be my concern. My concern should be where am I going to work? Where I’m going to feel comfortable enough that I can work well and do my best.

There’s a thing that I think Tara was saying about, about vulnerability theater. They want us to be vulnerable, but then it comes down to it and they’re like, be vulnerable, but not like that. There’s this wonderful thing that I feel happens for, for folks working with neurodiversity.

And I don’t know, let me know, let me know if this is, if this is relatable friends. But I find there’s this certain amount of, I, I feel like there’s this extra amount of vulnerability that, that folks working with neuro neurodiversity have because I, one, I mean, we, we know we’ve been put in, in a bunch of extra vulnerable positions physically or mentally. And I, I agree that that can also be said of a lot of other, other people neuro-typical, neuro-divergent or not.

But also there’s this, this thing that I’m learning with, with invisible disability and neuro-divergence is there’s this kind of added and specific level of shame that comes in with being associated to our behavior because folks cannot see, folks, folks cannot see that we operate with, with disabilities. We’re, we, a lot of the time we are able appearing. This is not always true, but it, there, there are those working with individual, in individual, oh my gosh, invisible disabilities, where I, if, if our invisible disabilities are not seen, then our abilities cannot be seen.

And so our invisible disabilities are mistaken for behavior and our behavior is then something that we should be ashamed of instead of accommodating, instead of, instead of facilitating. And that’s not to, not, not to say that we get carte blanche for, for our behavior by any means. But it does mean that we need to learn to see our disability again, to be able to, to see our abilities, especially in this field.

Amber Jade, I think you have something to say. Oh, then add the layer of racism and being a Black woman in this industry and people seeing your invisible disabilities, your incapabilities as being behavior. Ooh, child.

Janet Hubert. I, I still think of like the Fresh Prince reunion. Shout out to Fresh Prince.

Love that. But like, it took a lot for her to show up to set and talk to Will Smith about how she felt she was treated because everyone knows that she was replaced with a different at Viv who brought like no spice to it because like she was seen as difficult. And because she was seen as difficult to work with, she was fired from the show.

And then it was hard for her to find work, but Will just like was young and dumb and didn’t even ask her if she needed anything. And no one, no one knew what she was even struggling with, but everyone saw her as angry. And that was the way she was depicted for all of our childhoods.

And, and of course, like you get a bad rap, then it’s like over for your career. And especially that early on when everything is word of mouth, you don’t even know what’s happening to you and you’re getting blacklisted. And you can’t even like advocate for yourself and prove anyone wrong because you’re not even being brought in.

So then just imagine being like having to navigate all of that plus like people’s implicit bias because of our race. Like I walk into a room, you expect a thing already. And then when I especially don’t meet that thing because of a thing that you can’t see, what am I supposed to do? What do you want from me? Yeah.

That’s a, that’s, that’s a big one for me. Number one, I’m going to own that phone ding. I’m going to own it.

I think they didn’t want to interrupt by coming inside. So they decided to Dex and he, he was trying to do the complete opposite. I’m a laugh at him later.

Um, I will say on the subject of behavior for myself, I was actually in a manic state for two years because I was wrongly diagnosed and on the wrong medication. And there are very specific moments where I know like something was up or something wasn’t okay. But at the time I didn’t know.

Right. So I remember being in a workshop and I’ll, I’ll break down for folks kind of, if you don’t know specifically about neurological disorders and how, and mood disorders, um, and how they can affect things. I was in a workshop where they were talking about grants there.

They’re talking about the grants and, you know, white woman is sitting there and she’s saying, you know, people are great. I’ve done a lot of fundraisers and folks will support you if you do good work. And I’m sitting there like, no, people will support you.

If you do good work, you get funders. And then of course, like another white woman comes in and says, yeah, I got X amount of money and it wasn’t enough. And it was really hard on me.

And so now everyone’s sitting and having this conversation around, you know, inviting people to your shows and producing and how you can get sponsorships. And I’m sitting here like, is no one going to address this? Do I have a right to be highly irritated? Yes. Me in a regular mood and a level of leveled out mood like this, it’s just going to have the conversation and bring up the fact that around access, around even people wanting to come and see our stuff, even when they do the level of ignorance, I’ve heard things at talkbacks that shook me.

And these things are not thought of on a regular basis. And so I literally rage, rage, you know, and I remember the, I remember starting off with like, can you not act as if you and I have the same opportunity? Don’t lie to my face. Listen, I’m going to tell y’all right now.

All right. All right. Right in front of Emojade.

All right. Emojade works a lot. Emojade works within the thing.

Emojade has to care more than I will ever care. I’m telling y’all right now, these people are ridiculous because it’s the idea that we’re going into the spaces and we’re so open, mental health awareness. You don’t send around a PDF telling me how much you care when I know you’re going to ignore me.

So this woman is really sitting here speaking about all the producers that she can bring in and the access that you can gain. And trust me, I’ve seen a lot of women like her get a lot of the things she did. But let me tell you that rage, there was not, there was no way she could deserve that rage.

There was nothing to afford that rage. That poor lady. If I find her, I will publicly apologize because poor lady got publicly, not cursed out, not yelled at.

Because I was so frustrated and not in a state of mind to take that second, third thought to be considerate. Was I wrong for being upset? No, I stand by it. But it doesn’t mean that someone needs to be reamed out publicly and have to deal with working through having to do that extra half an hour or whatever it is.

But this is an example with me that I’m aware of, is there are some things, why would you want to accommodate for that? I don’t want to accommodate for that. I did it and I don’t want to accommodate for it. So there are, there are certain times where I always wonder in the idea of making these spaces more accessible and safer for us, more accommodating for us collectively.

What would that be? What would that, what would that look like? And that’s always my big question, right? Like, what would those points be? Would it change the entire space? Doesn’t mean that all these artistic directors or these directors are really going to have to rejig stuff? Because in, sorry to say for me, I don’t know if there’s ever going to be a space like that. There’s always going to be things. I think the conversation needs to be had and I think we need to be open to adjustment, to tweaking, having full conversations rather than just saying, you know what, these are some of the things that we assume people deal with and trying to implement them.

Because I do believe that those things are happening. I do believe that these folks are trying. There are people trying to have conversations like we are that deal with something very similar, but also very individual.

So even if they were trying to accommodate Emma Jade, Tori and I, what would that look like? Because I have different things than Emma Jade. Emma Jade has different things than Tori. If you are really trying to accommodate every person, what is that? Some people are extremely late and they roll in like 45 minutes late and I’m sitting there like, are you serious? This is rehearsal and I’m all in my feelings about it, right? And in that same vein, it’s like, I’m not good with numbers.

9 versus 9.30, I don’t know what that is. It’s either I’m going to be 10 minutes early and circling the block or I’m going to be that five minutes late because I wanted to circle a block and I got lost. Could we talk about that rehearsal hall? We could build that right here.

We can build that and we can take a moment and talk about if we can, because like Alia said, we don’t always know what we need until we need it. But if you were to try to put into words what you would need in the rehearsal hall and we’ll take a second, let each of you say as many things as it is that you need. And then we try to put that together into a rehearsal hall and see if we can make that something that works.

I think it would be cool if like even before the first, you know how so stage managers usually introduce themselves within an email before we even get into the hall so that you know who your point of contact is. I think it would be super cool that before we even get into the room that we talk about what we may possibly need and things that we could run into before we even enter the room. And then when we get into the room and we’re there physically, I think it’d be so cool that not only the neurodivergent people, because the work is richer when people are comfortable and relaxed in themselves and know that they can do their job.

I think it would be super cool if every single person discusses what they need and not like what they’re willing to do, like whatever is good for the group, like what do you specifically need from this rehearsal process to be able to make it out on the other side and say that I did a good job and this is going to be really good work and I’m excited and energized and fueled by this. I don’t think that’s ever happened in any of the rooms that I’ve entered where our needs are discussed. And sometimes like it’s intimidating because sometimes you don’t like want to be super open about it and you don’t want to discuss your in front of people.

But I think like that is stigma at work. Yes. When you don’t want to do that.

And something that I’ve actively been working on and trying to do is like break out of stigma and talk about my mental illness more and more and publicly and like putting myself on display. Because I’m willing to take on like the roughness of sharing my shit if it means that like someone it makes someone else feel more confident to own their shit and like make someone feel calmer and make someone feel empowered to be able to go into whatever situation they’re going into and be able to ask for what they need. So I don’t know what the answer really is.

And again it’s just like a case by honestly when it comes to like the way that our brains work it’s like not even day to day sometimes sometimes it’s hour to hour where I simply don’t know what I need. Sometimes I need to have a drink of water because I literally forgot to drink water all day. Sometimes it’s I have a migraine and I actually need to like shut down my body for half an hour and then start it up again.

But of course like how is a how is a rehearsal hall accommodating for nap time you know. And it’s just like you simply don’t know until you get there. And it’s like so hard to like be able to articulate these things.

And it feels like so again feels like you’re sullying the theatrical practice by asking for these things. Yes. But it would be so one of the things I want to jump in and say is just is one of the things I want to jump in and say is is is you’re right.

It would be awesome. And I think that that’s if we could all start the rehearsal process by by saying what we need because I think there’s a lot of people a lot of people in the industry who are fighting through what they and not not accommodating what they need themselves in order to just do the work. For example I’m an introvert.

I need my time away from these people. You know we’re in the ensemble. I am not going to lunch with you.

And that’s not an insult. It’s because if I’m going to survive the rest of this day I need to be away from you. And that’s just one little thing.

I’m not going out for drinks after. Again I need my time away from you. And we if we can all say and and and put it out there the thing that we need and everybody has the freedom to say what they need then there are no misunderstandings when those things come up.

We’ve already said I need this and that might change. And if you say sometimes I’m not going to lie sometimes I need like a 20 minute nap in the middle of the day and whatever that is that’s happened. And if we can accommodate that.

Awesome. If we can’t. I understand.

Like just put it all out there and everybody gets the freedom to say what they need. And it’s they’re not punished for it because everybody’s saying what they need. I 100 percent agree on on on being able to voice our needs.

And I think that doing group agreements at the start of rehearsal processes is a step in the right direction for that. I know for myself I I I’ve started to compile these like one sheet documents just being like these are my needs for a rehearsal space. These are my needs.

And like that way. Hey you got questions. Come come talk to me.

But this is this is the concise version. And I try to keep it as one page because you go beyond that and you’re you’re lost. But also how do you how do you explain empathy as an as an accommodation.

I think the biggest thing that we need to the biggest thing that we need to to learn within addressing accessibility is time. In general even without looking at accommodations the way that that a lot of rehearsal processes are packaged right now within a professional context within a we’re doing this for six to eight hours a day. And this is your this is your your work week now.

The way that that is set up does not allow for time for the management of these needs. And I’m going to say this right now. Hey artistic directors out there.

There are definitely ways to write grants to get the funding that you need to be able to run a larger than two week contract. It is 100 percent possible. And they will absolutely fund you if you are saying that I need to prorate this as an access need.

I think that that is so important. Am I still am I still going. Can people still hear me.

I’m not sure. Can folks still hear me on here. Okay.

There’s also I find that time is definitely the biggest one. And and I find that a lot of companies are backing off of that for fear of scarcity. Which I understand.

But also if you’re going to the granting bodies ahead of time and saying that this is an accessibility need. Then the granting bodies are more inclined to give you that. And I get really frustrated with the fear of scarcity that that comes up with time for that reason.

Because I’ve also been through several rehearsal spaces where I have been tried to be rushed along and told that I’m just not doing the work. Because I need more time than than others to process a particular direction. And then I’m labeled as just doing one note.

And it’s like well no I’m actually not doing one note. You just haven’t given me any time to fully process it. And I get already like that language is not language that I like to use.

I’m not not doing my job. You’re just not letting me. Well that’s that’s not even the helpful way to respond within a professional context.

But also that’s sometimes how far we get triggered by different criticisms if these needs are not seen. So in terms of facilitating a space that addresses my needs. I mean I need a space that has a facilitation for time and a flexibility with time that is thought out ahead way ahead of time so that it can be funded and affordable.

Especially since last digression here I swear. Especially since six to eight hours does not even encompass the normal quote-unquote normal neurotypical hours of productivity in a day which is only supposed to be about five. And out of those five folks working with neurodiversity actually only have about three because at least two of those hours are spent just managing our our needs as well.

And yes we are managing them too. We’re not just giving them all to companies going you got a deal with me now. We’re saying we’re doing a lot of work here.

We’re putting in at least two hours. Can you put in can you give us those hours back so that we can give you the full six hours or eight hours that that you’re asking for. As well as in in in my case but I think in in everyone’s case having empathy as as a need not as an accommodation but as a need.

I struggle with social cues so I very often have on my sheet. It would be really great if you could one ask for clarity if I say something that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t or or kind of jars you a bit. As well as I assume the best intentions and still call me in because I may not realize that my mind has jumped to three different places or I may not realize that my inside thoughts as I’m processing what you have said have been said or I may I may have said my entire sentence and phrasing backwards which makes me sound like an angry five-year-old when really I’m actually having a great time and just really want to share everything and then realizing oh that came out very passionately and now it looks very angry or looks like I’m very sarcastic if I’ve got too flat a tone or looks like I’m overacting everything because I really want you to know that I’m not mad.

And I think that what happens with the layer of race being a Black woman it is very much always assume that you’re yelling. So even even yesterday I was having like a work kind of meetup collaboration thing with someone and we’re having this conversation and he goes hey wait are you are you upset or does that bother you because it’s just really hard to read your tone sometimes and I was like thank you instead of saying that they can’t read my tone instead of asking what I mean people assume the anger assume the dislike and they go off on that this guy was talking to me perfectly fine he couldn’t tell and he just said it and I was able to say yes or no or why or whatever the question was and move forward with a bet he now has a better understanding of my tone my person and how I work but it’s a very different thing when no one says anything and they’re like oh Aaliyah’s so angry do I know you oh wow you know it’s just like the way she talks she just sounds so aggressive yeah I would rather have passion with aggression I would rather have someone say hey I actually can’t tell if you’re really excited about this or if it completely sucks to you because your tone those things are so similar and they sound so similar coming from you when you don’t get that question and the assumption is the most negative due to massage noir due to ignorance due to simply not feeling like they have the time to be as Tori says empathetic there is no room for that so the amount of times that I’ve had situations with folks especially non-Black peoples usually non-Black peoples that come to know me and are surprised by a gentle nature surprised by vulnerability and I tell these people you know I can cry as loud as I can yell that that is what it is I’ve been in different situations and I’ve come across challenges that are not even a thought to you you may not even be able to comprehend the issues that let’s generalize Black women deal with when you’re not coming up against that and you don’t hear those things about yourself you’re not being bashed on a regular basis you don’t lose your job if you mess up you’re not blackballed if you mess up but you can be and in situations especially because of the community and how tight said community is you’re extra afraid to piss somebody off and I I have to be honest with that because I just haven’t had a beautiful time around mental health folks being accommodating specifically in my performance practice and it really makes it harder for me to love the practice when I always end up feeling somewhat inadequate for something that I’m born with right so for myself I say you know I was working with someone who’s very type-a and had all that together and I realized in that rehearsal process I need to eat I need snacks like legitimate snacks um when I’m doing a collaboration with someone that first meeting isn’t rehearsal that first meeting isn’t let’s yank out you know all the writing from the last three months this meeting is let me get to know you let me get to know the art that you enjoy let me figure out how you see things and what your preferences may be because it’s a collaboration you know there’s a fascinating we’ve talked about so many things there like empathy the idea that our rehearsal halls lack empathy is not a surprise but it’s also bullshit because we talk about you know this is a safe space this is like we’re creating here but if the rehearsal hall doesn’t have empathy then all of that is a lie anyway but just to put on top of that you know we’re talking about about saying what you need if if the rehearsal like if that was like part two of the rehearsal say what you need but alia what you’re talking about is like everybody talking about their inspirations what do they love what kind of art do they love what what’s their favorite play like what a great way to get to know your castmates to say here’s the art that we all love oh yeah i love that i didn’t like that well why like just like have that freeform conversation let’s talk about the art that we love what a great way to get to know each other and now that we’re comfortable with each other now we can really talk about what we need from the rehearsal process those two things in combination i think if that was your morning for a rehearsal for your first day of rehearsal what a great way to go out to lunch like just you would be everybody i think be in a really great space personally having better understanding of at least for me if say someone’s bringing me on to a project uh say i’ve had that recently when they’re like hey you do this really cool thing and i think we could do really cool work together i’m always going to go in a yes trying to figure out what exactly they may need from me but trying to get to know that person so when we are doing collaboration it’s more genuine it means that that person is equally uh giving their selves to that piece as well and so like if i can’t sit and eat chips with you if i can’t you want to be all healthy good good go rinse out some grapes put that in a bowl we could do the same thing i fully agree and you know talking about the art that you love that should not just be for the actors the director should do it the stage manager should do it the choreographer could do it the designer should do it everybody should do it let’s let’s bring everybody on and everybody should also get to say what they need from the rehearsal and you know get all of that in there like put it all out there and also try to figure out how to deal with time like tory was saying if we could accommodate these three things if we could do these three things and figure out time we’d have a pretty good rehearsal hall this is kind of gorgeous because i didn’t know how this was going to turn out i thought maybe it was going to be like a bigger thing but you know what that that says so much that says so much about the possibilities of what we can do as far as making folks or having folks be more comfortable in spaces and i will say i’ve sadly experienced the feeling of incapability around performance um and so it would be great to dispel that and to let folks know that and especially these major companies know it’s it’s not like we’re going to cost you a million dollars it we do not want to quit halfway through your show we want to work to our full capability and this is what is going to help us absolutely literally that literally that gosh like if if they would just like listen to us once about what we need their show would be in such better position because we want to do our best work we don’t come in not wanting to do our greatest work we all come in wanting to add to the fire and burn everything down but then like my asking for like one nap time is now rainfall on this fire that we’ve created i think it’s important that that that we acknowledge and just going into the rehearsal hall that that if we’ve talked about all the things that we need that we can we can not just we can’t just not just accommodate those things we can provide those things and really fundamentally change the way that the rehearsal hall works just as we start to start to wrap this up i want to give every each of you a chance for any final thoughts about about anything that we’ve discussed anything that you want to plug as well feel free to plug anything that’s coming up i mean like this conversation has helped me realize a lot of things but mostly that um like our needs are possible to be met and yes i think just like just like with how we all had to adjust and pivot and adapt to the zoom world our dreams are so possible and we should be able to make them happen uh like and it’s not even like beyond us because we’ve been able to dream this big to make like theater online like we’ve already made that dream possible so why can’t we just dream like a little bit bigger so that everyone can be in the circle that’s my kind of final thought um yeah absolutely thank you uh tori yeah i uh oh um so we need to remember that we are coming at this with a highly institutionalized language um and that there’s this current concept of professionalism that conflicts with a lot of this and we need to throw that out the window um but in order to talk about needs um in order to fully understand needs there are various different concepts of professionalism that uh that are still being held on to in various different rooms that we don’t need we just don’t need to hold on to and um i think that that’s going to be a big a big building block that that once once that’s established um things will will become a lot easier for a lot of different people um there’s there’s having decorum there’s having there’s there’s delivering a product and all of the things that come within you know live performance in a in a when when you are exchanging goods and services um but uh our our concepts of what professionalism is right now is standing in the of what uh i i believe uh we need to get at for uh for creating accessibility and that a large part of that lies within within language um because yeah i can go in and talk about really lovely creative things but i’ll sound like five year old at times and and i actually have really great ideas but you’ve got to be okay with them coming through backwards or through through through the lens of of seeming like a five-year-old when when there’s a a much older person there who’s been doing this for a lot longer um also i just want to note um because this is a huge thing for me um yes i i’m an artistic director of a theater company i’m also an artist and i think that that needs to be said because i’m i’m an individual i am an actor i am a playwright i am a director i am a creator and i’ve spent the past 10 years working to create space uh for what i am now realizing is is actually neurodivergence um in theater i but also in order to do that i have to create space for myself and um there are a lot of people who have in the past while well-meaning placed me in the role of a producer uh or as a warrior um for for various different things and i mean case in point right now there’s there’s so many things that are going on in the world that that i’m advocating for and i’m it is important that i advocate for those things but also i’m a creator and that’s who i am at heart and we hear this song from so many people at so many different times um but i think more than ever this is important and this is true about me as an individual artist and and and about many people working with neurodiversity because it’s those people who work with neurodiversity who often get put into these places of being a producer who when they want to create in a room are stripped of their right to create because they don’t quote-unquote get it or they take too much time um and i encourage everybody when you’re talking to the to the next person you see working with neurodivergence ask them what they’re creating ask them what they’re building if if you know that that is what they want to do um and ask them what they want to do um because sure i will write grants till the cows come home um but i for the first time in many years have written a grant for a script that i’m writing and i i want to make space i i have to make space for myself in order to be able to make space for for for my community as well um and that’s so important for folks working with neurodivergence i’ve taken way too long please uh end of thoughts thank you thank you tori aliyah any final thoughts um final thoughts i would say that i’d i’d echo emma jade and the idea of realizing a lot during the conversation around how much more accessible this these amounts of supports can be and also walking with an acknowledgement of this is such a big conversation and neurodiverse peoples are quite diverse so even though we don’t have to uh i guess divulge what individually all of us go through most disorders also come you know they roll deep disorders roll deep so it’s not only going to be um the one thing like time you have an issue with there might be depression that you have an issue with there may be fatigue that you have an issue with so how are we are we handling that and holding space for that is the idea as a director that then you are moving around which seems that you’re doing that day to accommodate that person’s say 20 minute nap and extra 10 minutes to get their life back together before they come back into the personal hall these things can happen um it is effort but not to the extreme of which it is often looked at so i i i feel that way about the conversation in regards to steps and change and moving forward that’s that’s the big one for me tori ever jane elia thank you so much it’s always a joy to talk to each of you and thanks for joining me today to talk about this