Activating the Past: Performing Disability Rights in the Classroom. Issue 2 (May 2018) - Lewis, Victoria
Abstract : The article discusses the development and performance of the documentary play On the Road to the ADA: a Reenactment, September 27, 1988, within the context of an introductory disability studies course at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2015. The authors review the experience of bringing together undergraduate students with disabled community activists and artists to argue for the efficacy of theatre to usher disability history into the present. Using the transcript from the US Congressional Record of the first joint hearing of the Senate subcommittee on the proposed Americans with Disability Act (ADA)—at the time still two years away from becoming a reality—the play voiced the stories of oppression that led to the passage of this ground breaking civil rights legislation. Mounted just a few months prior to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ADA, the performance provided a portrait of disabled people as agents of political change even as it underscored the ongoing struggle for equality and inclusion.