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| Cyree Jarelle Johnson Reading Poetry at I Wanna Be with You Everywhere |
This week we read "I Wanna Be with You Everywhere (And I Am): Disability Justice Art as Freedom Portal" by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. In her essay she talks about her time in New York at Performance Space New York and the Whitney Museum as a performer. She participated in I Wanna Be with You Everywhere, which was a group of disabled artists and writers and anyone else who wanted to be involved, that would get together for a variety of performances. The cast was full of disabled people, deaf people, people of color, queer people, trans people, all of which were artists.
This gathering included many accommodations for just about anything that you could think of. It is so incredible how inclusive they were. They included feather beds for people who experience pain with prolonged sitting, a sensory-friendly room for neurodivergent people with free devices to cover their ears, pillow forts, coloring books, and a seashell collection. They thought about everything! Their performances included ASL interpreters and captioning on huge screens. They also had audio descriptions available, in fact, I'm ashamed to say, this is the first that I have heard of audio descriptions. It just shows you that when you are not in need of a certain accommodation it's easy to overlook them. After we discussed audio descriptions in class, I realized how important they are. I decided that whenever I share my work anywhere, I would like to provide a detailed audio description for anyone that needs it.
Leah then discusses the situations she has found herself in where accommodations were not met. Basic access was not safe for her because she would have to climb a flight of stairs or more to access the performance area. When they would ask for accommodations, they often got angry responses. "The nerve of them to want to safely access our building, right?" When Leah joined a group called Sins Invalid things were different. She was able to see the potential that disabled culture and realities had on performing arts. They had much more time to prepare. People had hours to check into the show because some people need that accommodation. One year they also made a performance fragrance-free. No one could wear perfumes or colognes because it could trigger someone's allergies, or let's be honest, some people just wear way too much that it burns your eyes to be around them. That was yet another accommodation that I have never considered before. I was especially touched by the fact that some performances they put on has trauma-informed counselors in case there was a scene that was about a heavy topic.
The image that I chose to share is of Cyree Jarelle Johnson reading his own poetry at I Wanna Be with You Everywhere. I thought this image was great because it shows that he is able to share his art with everyone while sitting comfortably, he has an ASL interpreter, and you can clearly see the captions being projected behind him at all times. Their website has many images of disabled artists on stage performing. This was just one of many great examples. This reading really has opened my eyes on how to be more inclusive to those around me who have disabilities. I am still learning more ways that I can accommodate for everyone in the future. It would be incredible if we could work on incorporating more of these accommodations to the gallery and performances at CSU.
Works Cited
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, "I Wanna be with you Everywhere (And I Am): Disability Justice Art as Freedom Portal," in The Future is Disabled (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), 183-196.
https://performancespacenewyork.org/shows/i-wanna-be-with-you-everywhere/ (Image Source)
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