Troupe commands the stage with a repertoire to shift public perception
By Lorraine Kee
Of the Post-Dispatch

Joan Lipkin, the director of the Disability Project goes over some last minute direction before their final  performance before haitus.  (Jamie Rector/P-D)

The show won't go on for at least an hour.

But members of the DisAbility Project have arrived early, at the urging of director Joan Lipkin, for a performance at the 8th annual International Post-Polio and Independent Living Conference at the Marriott Pavilion hotel. Tonight they will perform in front of their biggest house yet -- about 200 people. In the audience will be polio survivors, health professionals, support group leaders, family and friends.

The gig marks the end of a productive winter-to-spring run for the Project, perhaps a turning point too for the troupe. The ensemble, which consists of actors with disabilities and without them, has evolved from an idea to gigs. Now it has to make some decisions about the future. But that's a matter for their potluck supper in two days. First, the ensemble has to get through tonight.

Backstage, Lipkin is a bundle of energy. She scurries back and forth tending to details -- the sound system, the lighting system and making sure everyone has what they need.

If the actors are nervous, it isn't apparent. They wrap up their sandwiches and small talk.

Katie Rodriguez Banister is a little chilly. Can she wear a sweater over her black and white DisAbility Project shirt? she asks Lipkin. You can wear whatever you want, Lipkin says.

"Can I wear pasties?" Rodriguez Banister says.

Lipkin smiles.

Fran Cohen, an occupational therapist who has been a supporter of the group since its conception, asks Stuart Falk how his singles speed-dating adventure turned out.

"I got three matches," Falk says. "I went out with one. She hasn't been returning my calls. I guess I'm destined to be alone. I don't want to be alone, but I don't want to get married again."

Lipkin reappears about a half-hour before curtain time, and they run through the order of the pieces they will perform. Tonight, they will exhaust their repertoire. She gives some last-minute direction, reminding them about blocking, props, projecting their voices in the large banquet hall. Don't rush your lines, Rodriguez Banister says.

With 10 minutes to go, the performers take their places onstage. The heavy maroon curtains are pulled back.

"We're not like any other group," Lipkin tells the audience during the introduction. The director believes the ensemble may be the only one of its kind in the nation, bringing together performers with disabilities and those without, and by producing original material.

Game, setback, met his match

Falk loved running in road races. He speaks with gusto of street hockey and touch football games.

"I had a great first step," Falk, 38, says, and it doesn't sound like idle bluster. The intensity of his eyes conveys a fierce competitor, if not a gifted one.

Falk is a man who likes the company of others, who seems to genuinely like people. He would be the sort that wouldn't choke, performing when a game was on the line. He wouldn't let the team down. What he misses most -- "terribly" -- is the teamwork.

"Which I thought was gone from my life," says Falk, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in the northern suburbs of New York.

In his early 20s, Falk began to notice that he would miss a step when running. His toe would catch on the smoothest of running surfaces. He was 25 when doctors made a diagnosis and told him he had multiple
sclerosis, the chronic, progressive type. He has a bachelor's degree from Northeastern University in philosophy but had to drop out of chiropractic school here because his legs could no longer support him. He makes ends meet on Social Security and by tutoring in a number of subjects.

The onset of the neurological disease sent him into a depression. Now, the philosophical Falk tends to think of what is happening to his body as swapping shots in some grand tennis match with the Almighty.

"When I least expect it, God sends me a shot," Falk says. "Sometimes the shot pushes me off the court, three rows into the stands. But I must be playing well, because God keeps leaving me in the point."

Falk finds independence in his lift-equipped van. But today he took the MetroLink to the Einstein Bros. bagel restaurant in the Central West End. He sits on the ground level of the restaurant, where the aisles are plenty wide and the counter is low enough for him to maneuver his wheelchair.

A couple of steps, however, lead to a sunny, inaccessible upper level. Six years ago, Falk was among a group who sued the St. Louis Bread Co. for failing to make a new sun room accessible. The company later agreed to make all its restaurants accessible.

Curtain calls

The actors in the DisAbility Project, about 15 on the night of the Post-Polio conference, start with a breathing exercise and then demonstrate The Sharing Circle by thanking one after another.

The first piece they perform is "Waking in the Forest." They wind up with the mirroring exercise. The players conclude:

"We are of you. We are among you. We are you. Do not be afraid."

The pace is perfect. Members of the audience laugh at all the right lines, even get inside references about the challenge of finding a good personal attendant.

Their performance is well-received, the applause warm and steady. They take questions and then wade into the audience.

"You guys were terrific," Lipkin tells them, before everyone scatters into the night to spend the buzz from their performance.

Falk is "more on" that night than Lipkin has ever seen him.

Return of serve

"God," Falk says, "has a way of replacing things."

He found out about the DisAbility Project about three years ago from Cohen. Lipkin remembers the day Falk braved a storm rather than miss rehearsal. Another time, he arrived late for rehearsal -- after driving his wheelchair over sidewalks and streets from Crestwood to 4444 Forest Park Avenue, where they hold rehearsals on Saturdays in a reception area for the occupational therapy program at Washington University. That 12.1-mile journey, on a warm day, had taken him six hours.

Falk likes coming through in the clutch for the ensemble, running his lines. This is important work the ensemble is doing.

"I loved the Sheldon," he says, referring to a Project performance on the concert hall's stage for the VSA Arts of Missouri festival.

Falk says he learned from his father how to please an audience. When his father visited friends, he often took with him a gift of wine and good conversation.

His father taught him never to go anywhere empty-handed, but Falk is on the receiving end in the DisAbility Project.

"I get approval," he says. "I get acknowledgment from the other people, other members of the troupe. We work as a team. We rely on each other."

Fitting conclusion

Their potluck supper, arrayed invitingly on a table in the dining room, will be devoured soon enough. But there's some business that needs to be taken care of first, Lipkin tells the troupe. The troupe's members sit in a circle in ensemble member Marcia LaCour-Little's living room in University City.

The DisAbility Project has grown to the point where Lipkin needs help running it. She has visions of expanding the troupe, not only for the sake of diversity, but also so she will have replacements in case of absences.

The Project has gotten by on a budget of less than $50,000. That was when Lipkin thought it was working toward one big production this year, the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That was also before the gigs started rolling in regularly this spring. If they are going to depart from the Project's original direction, they will need to double their budget.

And Lipkin is convinced that, given the reception they've gotten this spring, the Project is producing theater that is relevant and creative.

The troupe has some decisions to make, Lipkin says. For now, they agree to continue to tour with the possibility of a major production in the future. They will hire a stage production manager, so Lipkin can devote herself to creative and financial matters. The manager will handle day-to-day and logistical matters. Nick Kalfas, one of the ensemble's members, volunteers and is later hired. Lipkin will look for a new assistant to replace Edith Ritterband whose family is moving to Colorado.

The ensemble breaks up. Almost everyone heads toward the potluck. Lipkin slips into a sun room off the dining and living areas. One by one, the performers enter. She asks them about their availability for future dates. They talk about creativity and art.

Mostly though, they talk about what the Project has meant to them. The ensemble has given them a not-too-preachy stage to speak for people with disabilities, to show the rest of the world how their half lives, to build relationships.

Their performances are intended to change perceptions about people with disabilities and raise the curtain on issues they confront. But the Project has changed them, given them visibility in a world where they are either painfully conspicuous or altogether invisible.

"I'm totally committed," says Rodriguez Banister, one of the first to enter the sun room. "I've been waiting for this my entire life."

Thea de Luna says she had resisted thinking of herself as disabled, despite a stroke that paralyzed her right side. De Luna tells Lipkin that performing has given her confidence -- she is thinking about returning to school to finish her degree in art therapy. But she's unsure whether she wants to take on another speaking part.

"I think you did a great job at Forest Park," Lipkin says, "and I really appreciated the effort that went into it. You were really trying to be a team player."

Andrew Lackey, 19, who has cerebral palsy, says he appreciates that Lipkin takes him seriously as a performer. He probably won't be available for future performances.

"Can we talk about that?" asks Lackey, who starts studies at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in August. "SIUE is not that far away."

Lipkin is the last guest to leave.

In the days ahead, she considers the ensemble's future. She sees it performing someday in a corporate setting. The business arena, like schools, is where she believes the Project can help change attitudes toward people with disabilities, many of them unemployed or underemployed.

"We haven't even scratched the surface yet of what we could mean to St. Louis and society," she says.

To reach the DisAbility Project, call 314-995-4600 or e-mail uppityco@aol.com.