In BASS FOR PICASSO, amputee and food writer for the New York Times Francesca Danieli throws a dinner party for her friends recreating recipes from the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. The guest list includes Pilar, her multilingual art detective lover, who has spent time in Guantanamo for visa problems; Bricka Matson, a lesbian widow with a small child and Republican in-laws who are trying to gain custody; Joe, an OB/GYN whose lover is a geographically challenged crystal meth addict; and Kev, a playwright who has recently fallen off the wagon and written a soon-to-open Off-Broadway play about all of them. It's an insanely funny, irreverent 90-minute look at gay and lesbian life in the new millennium.
Playwright Kate Moira Ryan – author of 25 QUESTIONS FOR A JEWISH MOTHER, THE BEEBO BRINKER CHRONICLES, OTMA, CAVEDWELLER, and most recently MOMMY QUEEREST – has crafted a funny, deeply touching look inside the life of five driven New Yorkers, including a woman whose disability is a part of her life, but does not define it. That's the way it works for so many of the 54,000,000 Americans, nearly 20% of all U.S. citizens, who deal with a disability.
To gain greater acceptance of people with disabilities, Theater Breaking Through Barriers strives to show their lives realistically enacted onstage, on TV and in films, and by actors who actually have disabilities. The recent controversies concerning the use of a hearing actor to play a deaf character Off-Broadway in THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, and of a seeing and hearing actress to play Helen Keller on Broadway in THE MIRACLE WORKER, show the problem is very much with us. What's good is there is now controversy; years ago no one would even have noticed.
"Three things are necessary to confront this problem: the willingness of producers to risk using actors with disabilities; the training and development of these actors; and the existence of visible role models to inspire young people with disabilities to dare to become actors and writers and represent their own lives," says Mr. Schambelan, who will direct the play. "We are the only Off-Broadway theater showing the wares of these talents," he adds.
