On March 29, 2022, Keith Wann received an email offering him a free-
lance assignment. The job was routine: interpret a single performance
of “The Lion King” on Broadway into American Sign Language for
Deaf audience members. The pay was $1,000. The date was April 24.
Wann accepted.
Wann was fifty-three years old. He was a CODA, a Child of
Deaf Adults, which meant he had grown up bilingual in English and
ASL, his first language acquired not in a classroom but in his family’s
kitchen. CODAs occupy a distinctive position in the Deaf community:
they are hearing people who are culturally Deaf, who move between
the hearing and Deaf worlds with a fluency that formally trained inter-
preters spend years developing. Wann had been interpreting Broadway
shows for over a decade, working through the Theatre Development
Fund’s accessibility program, which staffed ASL interpreters for des-
ignated performances across Broadway. He was one of TDF’s most
experienced theatrical interpreters, and he served as a trainer for newer
interpreters entering the Broadway pipeline, including BIPOC inter-
preters whom TDF was working to develop. He had interpreted shows
of every kind: musicals, plays, revivals, new works. His YouTube
channel, which highlighted Deaf culture and ASL performance, had
received one of YouTube’s early awards for reaching a million views.
He had co-authored the book “Our Stories: the Soul of Sign Language
Interpreting.” He was, by any professional measure, one of the most
qualified theatrical ASL interpreters working in New York. The as-
signment was routine. He had done dozens like it.
Four days later, on April 2, Wann received a second email. This
one was from Lisa Carling, the director of TDF’s accessibility pro-
grams. “With great embarrassment and apologies,” Carling wrote,
“I’m asking you both to please back out of interpreting the show for
us on Sunday, April 24. I don’t see any other way out of this. It seems
like the best solution.” Carling’s email also referenced “the current
social climate” as a factor in the decision.
The “both” referred to Wann and Christina Mosleh, another white
interpreter who had been booked for the same performance. The reg-
ular interpreter team for “The Lion King” was composed of BIPOC
interpreters. Two of the three team members were unavailable for the
April 24 date, and TDF had reached out to Wann and Mosleh as expe-
rienced fill-ins, a standard practice. The reason for the retraction was
contained in a separate email from Shelly Guy, the director of ASL for
“The Lion King,” to Carling. Guy wrote: “The majority of the charac-
ters in the Lion King are black actors, and the content takes place in
Africa. Keith Wann, though an amazing ASL performer, is not a black
person and therefore should not be representing Lion King.”
Wann was being removed from a job he was qualified to perform,
had been asked to perform, and had accepted in good faith, because his
skin color did not match the skin color of the actors on stage. He was
white. The cast was predominantly Black. Therefore, according to
Guy, he should not be “representing” the show. Guy was herself born
in Haifa, Israel, is not Black, and identifies no closer to the racial cat-
egory she was demanding than Wann does, a detail that adds a further
layer of absurdity: a non-Black ASL director was telling a non-Black
interpreter that his lack of Blackness disqualified him from providing
language access to Deaf audience members at a show about African
animals.
On November 8, 2022, Wann filed a federal discrimination law-
suit against TDF and Carling. He invoked 42 U.S.C. Section 1981,
a Reconstruction-era civil rights statute originally enacted to protect
formerly enslaved people’s right to make and enforce contracts re-
gardless of race. In 1976, the Supreme Court, in a decision written
by Justice Thurgood Marshall, ruled that the statute’s protections ex-
tended to white plaintiffs as well. Wann’s complaint was narrow: he
had been offered a contract, he had accepted it, and the contract was
revoked because of his race. The lawsuit sought, at minimum, $1,000
in compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees.
Two weeks later, the case settled. Both parties issued statements
expressing satisfaction with the resolution. Wann wrote on social me-
dia: “This past week has seen a lot of pain in our community and also
seen some much needed conversations. It is unfortunate that assump-
tions were made, and conclusions were drawn without all the facts.”
The Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf conducted its own investi-
gation and found no violations. TDF asked Wann to remain on their
interpreter roster. He declined.
The case was over. The questions it raised were not.
The first question is what an interpreter does, because the answer
determines whether the racial matching that Guy demanded makes any
sense.
An ASL interpreter at a Broadway performance sits or stands to
the side of the stage, visible to Deaf audience members who have been
seated in a designated section. The interpreter watches and listens to
the performance and renders it in real time into American Sign Lan-
guage. The interpreter conveys dialogue, lyrics, sound effects, musi-
cal cues, and emotional tone. The interpreter does not wear a costume.
The interpreter does not interact with the actors. The interpreter does
not play a role. The interpreter is, in the professional terminology of
the field, a conduit: a channel through which linguistic information
passes from one modality (spoken English, sung English, orchestral
music) to another (visual-gestural ASL).
The NAD-RID Code of Professional Conduct, jointly developed
by the National Association of the Deaf and the Registry of Interpreters
for the Deaf and adopted in 2005, codifies this understanding across
seven tenets. The Code applies to “certified and associate members
of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, Inc., Certified members
of the National Association of the Deaf, interns,” and covers “inter-
preted situations that are performed either face-to-face or remotely.”
Its philosophy rests on a foundational principle: “The American Deaf
community represents a cultural and linguistic group having the in-
alienable right to full and equal communication and to participation in
all aspects of society.”
Tenet 2 requires interpreters to “render the message faithfully by
conveying the content and spirit of what is being communicated.”
Tenet 2 also instructs interpreters to “refrain from providing coun-
sel, advice, or personal opinions.” Tenet 3 requires interpreters to
“conduct and present themselves in an unobtrusive manner and exer-
cise care in choice of attire.” The word “unobtrusive” is important.
The interpreter’s professional obligation is to be functionally invisi-
ble, to convey language without drawing attention to the act of con-
veyance. The interpreter is a window, not a painting. The audience
looks through the interpreter to reach the content, not at the interpreter
as content.
Tenet 2 further specifies that interpreters must “provide service
delivery regardless of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age,
disability, sexual orientation, or any other factor.”
That provision is worth reading twice. The profession’s own gov-
erning document explicitly states that interpretation services must be
delivered without regard to race. The Code does not say “the inter-
preter’s race.” It does not say “the consumer’s race.” It says interpre-
tation shall be provided “regardless of race,” full stop. The principle
is categorical: the interpreter’s job is to convey language, and the con-
veyance of language is not a racial act.
The history of the interpreting profession reinforces this under-
standing. The Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf was founded in
1964, at a time when most people who interpreted for Deaf indi-
viduals were not trained professionals but family members, friends,
clergy, and community volunteers who happened to know sign lan-
guage. Many were CODAs, like Wann. The professionalization of
interpreting over the following decades was specifically designed to
move the field from an informal, relationship-based model (where the
interpreter’s personal identity was inseparable from the service) to a
professional, competency-based model (where the interpreter’s quali-
fication was determined by skill, certification, and adherence to ethical
standards). RID’s certification system, its Ethical Practices System for
filing grievances, and its Certification Maintenance Program requiring
continuing education all exist to ensure that interpretation is evaluated
on the basis of professional performance rather than personal identity.
Shelly Guy’s email reversed sixty years of professionalization in a
single sentence. By declaring that Wann “should not be representing
Lion King” because he is not Black, Guy reintroduced the very confla-
tion of personal identity with professional function that the interpret-
ing profession had spent decades working to eliminate. Guy’s argu-
ment was that because the characters in “The Lion King” are played
by Black actors and the story takes place in Africa, a white interpreter
“should not be representing” the show. The verb is critical. “Repre-
senting” is not “interpreting.” An interpreter does not represent any-
one. An interpreter provides access to language. The interpreter is not
standing in for the actor, is not performing the character, is not em-
bodying the role. The interpreter is translating. The audience watches
the stage for the performance and watches the interpreter for the lan-
guage. These are separate visual channels serving separate functions.
Guy’s argument collapses the two channels into one. It treats the
interpreter’s body as if it were part of the production’s visual aesthetic,
as if the Deaf audience member watching the interpreter is watching
a second performance rather than receiving a linguistic translation.
This conflation has consequences that extend far beyond Keith Wann’s
$1,000 freelance gig.
The second question is what the characters in “The Lion King”
actually are, because the answer makes Guy’s argument not merely
wrong but absurd.
“The Lion King” is a musical about lions. The principal characters
are Simba, a lion. Mufasa, a lion. Scar, a lion. Nala, a lion. Rafiki,
a mandrill. Timon, a meerkat. Pumbaa, a warthog. Zazu, a hornbill.
The hyenas are hyenas. The wildebeest are wildebeest. The show is
set on the African savanna, and the characters are animals. Julie Tay-
mor’s celebrated production design uses masks, puppetry, and stylized
movement to create the animal world on stage. The actors are visible
beneath and within their costumes, but they are not playing human
beings. They are playing animals.
Guy’s argument was that because the actors playing these animals
are Black, the interpreter must also be Black. Follow the logic: the
character is a lion, played by a Black actor, interpreted by a person who
must be Black because the actor is Black. The interpreter is not match-
ing the character (a lion has no race). The interpreter is not matching
the story (the African savanna has no racial politics in the world of the
musical). The interpreter is matching the actor’s skin color. The racial
matching is between the interpreter and the performer, not between the
interpreter and the role, which means the matching has nothing to do
with the content being interpreted and everything to do with the vi-
sual appearance of two people who are performing entirely different
functions.
The absurdity deepens when you consider what theatrical interpre-
tation actually looks like in practice. A Broadway ASL interpreter
does not interpret a single character. The interpreter interprets the en-
tire show: every character, every voice, every sound. In the course
of a “Lion King” performance, the same interpreter conveys Mu-
fasa’s baritone authority, Scar’s sinister sibilance, young Simba’s ea-
gerness, Timon’s comic timing, Pumbaa’s geniality, Rafiki’s wisdom,
and the hyenas’ menace. The interpreter shifts between characters us-
ing changes in body position, facial expression, and signing style, just
as a single reader performing an audiobook voices all the characters
regardless of their gender, age, or race. If the interpreter must racially
match the cast, which cast member does the interpreter match? The
one playing Mufasa or the one playing Zazu? The one playing Nala
or the one playing Timon? In a show with a diverse cast of dozens,
the interpreter can match, at most, one performer’s racial identity at a
time. The principle defeats itself the moment it is applied.
This is the reductio ad absurdum of racial matching applied to the-
atrical access. If the interpreter must match the actor’s race, the princi-
ple must apply universally. A white interpreter cannot interpret “The
Lion King” because the cast is Black. A Black interpreter cannot in-
terpret “Wicked” if the cast is white. An Asian interpreter cannot in-
terpret “Dear Evan Hansen” if the cast is not Asian. The interpreter’s
professional qualification, linguistic skill, and years of experience be-
come irrelevant. The only qualification that matters is the one quali-
fication that has nothing to do with the interpreter’s ability to convey
language: the color of the interpreter’s skin.
Janna Sweenie, who has worked in the Deaf community as an ed-
ucator and author for decades and who co-authored educational mate-
rials on American Sign Language with this book’s author, has articu-
lated the professional distinction that the Wann case violated. The in-
terpreter’s ethical obligation, under the NAD-RID Code, is to the con-
sumer, which in a Broadway context means the Deaf audience member.
The interpreter’s obligation is not to the production, not to the show’s
ASL director, not to the institution’s racial preferences. The hierarchy
of obligations is clear: the Deaf person’s right to qualified language
access takes precedence over any other consideration. When an in-
stitution removes a qualified interpreter and replaces that interpreter
with a less experienced one (or with no interpreter at all, if no racially
matching replacement is available), the institution is not serving the
Deaf audience. It is serving its own ideology at the Deaf audience’s
expense. The Deaf community has fought for decades to establish the
right to qualified interpretation in medical, legal, educational, and cul-
tural settings. The principle that an interpreter’s qualifications can be
overridden by the interpreter’s racial identity undermines that fight at
its foundation.
The third question is whose access is being served, because the
answer reveals a priority inversion that this book cannot overlook.
The purpose of an ASL-interpreted Broadway performance is to
provide Deaf audience members with access to a show they cannot
hear. The performance exists for the Deaf audience. The interpreter
exists for the Deaf audience. The entire apparatus of TDF’s accessi-
bility program exists to ensure that Deaf people can experience Broad-
way on the same terms as hearing people. The Deaf audience member
paid for a ticket. The Deaf audience member is the consumer. The
interpreter is the service provider.
When TDF removed Keith Wann from the assignment because his
race did not match the cast’s race, TDF was not serving the Deaf au-
dience. TDF was serving a visual aesthetic that had nothing to do
with the Deaf audience’s linguistic needs. No Deaf audience mem-
ber had complained about Wann. No Deaf audience member had re-
quested a Black interpreter. The demand came from Shelly Guy, the
show’s ASL director, whose concern was not whether the Deaf audi-
ence would understand the interpretation but whether the interpreter’s
body would look right next to the stage.
Consider what the Deaf audience member actually experiences
during an interpreted performance. The audience member sits in a
designated section, typically house left or house right, with a clear
sightline to both the stage and the interpreter. The audience member’s
eyes move between two visual fields: the stage, where the perform-
ers act and sing, and the interpreter, where the language is rendered
in ASL. The interpreter’s body is a linguistic instrument. The shape
of the interpreter’s hands, the expression on the interpreter’s face, the
posture and movement of the interpreter’s torso convey meaning in
a language that is received entirely through the eyes. What the Deaf
audience member needs from that body is linguistic clarity, emotional
precision, and rhythmic coordination with the performance. What the
Deaf audience member does not need from that body is a racial match
with the actors on stage, because the interpreter’s body and the actors’
bodies serve entirely different functions and are processed by the au-
dience member through entirely different cognitive frameworks.
This is the priority inversion: the accessibility service was subordi-
nated to a casting philosophy. The Deaf audience’s need for a qualified
interpreter was ranked below the institution’s need for racial coherence
between the stage and the interpreter’s platform. The person who suf-
fers from this inversion is not Keith Wann, who lost a single $1,000
assignment and settled his lawsuit within two weeks. The person who
suffers is the hypothetical Deaf audience member who, in a system
governed by Guy’s principle, might attend a performance and receive
a less qualified interpreter because the more qualified interpreter was
the wrong color. Or worse: the Deaf audience member who receives
no interpreter at all because no racially matching interpreter is avail-
able and the institution would rather cancel the accessibility service
than provide it through a racially “inappropriate” body.
Wann himself identified this pattern in his interview with The
Daily Moth, the Deaf community’s primary news source. He noted
that his certified, trilingual, Latina wife had been called to interpret
only for “West Side Story” and the Gloria Estefan musical, because she
is Latina, even though she was qualified to interpret any production.
The same pool of interpreters was used repeatedly for the same racially
matched assignments while other qualified interpreters were excluded.
The racial matching did not expand opportunities for BIPOC inter-
preters. It confined them to a narrow set of racially “appropriate”
assignments, which is a different form of the same segregation the
matching was supposed to correct.
The Deaf community’s response to the Wann lawsuit was not uni-
fied, and the division illuminates the internal tension between two val-
ues the community holds simultaneously: the value of qualified access
and the value of cultural representation.
BIPOC interpreter Tiffany Hill, responding in ASL on social me-
dia, argued: “It’s not about the color of the skin. It is the culture.”
The distinction Hill drew was between racial matching (skin color)
and cultural competence (understanding of the cultural context being
interpreted). Cultural competence is a legitimate professional consid-
eration in interpretation. An interpreter working in a medical setting
benefits from familiarity with medical terminology. An interpreter
working in a legal setting benefits from familiarity with legal proce-
dure. An interpreter working on a show set in Africa with a predomi-
nantly Black cast might benefit from familiarity with the cultural ref-
erences embedded in the performance. But cultural competence is a
skill, not a skin color. It can be acquired through study, experience,
and professional development. A white interpreter who has spent a
decade interpreting Broadway shows with diverse casts has cultural
competence that a newly certified Black interpreter may not yet have
developed. Competence and identity are different things, and the con-
flation of the two is the error that the Wann case exposed.
The OnStage Blog’s editor, who is Korean American, published
an editorial that tried to hold both sides of the tension. He affirmed
Wann’s legal position (“this is discrimination”) while acknowledging
the legitimate desire for BIPOC interpreter representation. But he
drew a line:
“What I am not for is theatre officials and leaders making
dumb decisions in the name of progress when actually it could dam-
age progress.” The editorial identified the structural problem: Guy
handled the situation by removing a qualified white interpreter rather
than by building a system that developed and supported BIPOC in-
terpreters to the point where they could fill every assignment. The
subtraction model (remove white interpreters to create openings) was
chosen over the addition model (train and certify more BIPOC inter-
preters to expand the pool). The subtraction model is faster. It is also,
as Wann’s lawsuit demonstrated, illegal.
Deaf artist Raven Sutton posted a viral TikTok opposing Wann’s
lawsuit, captioning it “This is not discrimination” and arguing that
Black interpreters deserved the opportunity. The video was viewed
more than 57,000 times. Randy Spann, host of the Deaf talk show
“The Real Talk with Randy,” addressed Wann directly in a video re-
sponse: “You disgusted me. Enough is enough. Let black people have
their chance to be in the spotlight.” Other commenters on social media
told Wann to “stop taking all the jobs when we have black interpreters
who are a better fit.”
The framing across these responses is revealing. Spann described
the interpreter’s position as “the spotlight,” as if the interpreter is per-
forming rather than translating. Sutton and others framed the assign-
ment as an “opportunity” and a “chance,” as if the interpreter’s role is
a career-making theatrical appearance rather than a technical service
engagement. If the interpreter is in the spotlight, the interpreter is a per-
former, and the racial matching argument follows naturally: perform-
ers should match the production’s racial identity. But if the interpreter
is a conduit, as the profession’s own ethical code insists, the spotlight
framing is wrong, and the racial matching argument collapses.
The community division also revealed an uncomfortable tension
between two models of what the interpreter is for. In the first model,
the interpreter exists to serve the Deaf audience: to provide the best
possible language access regardless of who is interpreting. In the sec-
ond model, the interpreter exists to represent the Deaf community: to
be a visible presence whose identity carries its own meaning. The first
model evaluates interpreters on competence. The second model eval-
uates interpreters on identity. The two models produce different out-
comes, and the Wann case forced the community to choose between
them, or at least to acknowledge that it had not yet chosen.
The RID’s investigation found no ethical violations, which was
itself significant. The profession’s governing body, after examining
the emails, the timeline, and Wann’s history with TDF, concluded that
no professional standard had been breached. This did not mean the
removal was just. It meant the profession’s standards, as currently
written, do not address the question of whether an employer can re-
move an interpreter from an assignment based on race. The Code of
Professional Conduct governs the interpreter’s behavior, not the em-
ployer’s. The gap between professional ethics (which prohibit racial
discrimination in service delivery) and employment practices (which
in this case imposed racial discrimination in hiring) is the gap through
which the entire Wann episode fell.
The Wann case is the most instructive episode this book examines,
because it strips the casting debate to its mechanical components and
reveals the logic operating beneath every controversy the preceding
chapters have analyzed.
The logic is this: every body in the theatre is a text, and every
text must be read for its racial meaning. The actor’s body is a text.
The director’s body is a text. The playwright’s body is a text. And
now, the interpreter’s body is a text. No one in the theatrical space
is exempt from racial reading, and no function is too utilitarian, too
technical, too far removed from the creative act to escape the demand
for racial coherence. If the interpreter must match the cast, the lighting
designer must eventually match the playwright’s vision, the stage man-
ager must match the production’s cultural milieu, the house manager
must match the audience’s demographics. There is no logical stop-
ping point because the principle has no logical boundary. It applies
wherever a body is visible, and in the theatre, every body is visible.
This is the same recursion the previous chapter identified in the dis-
ability authenticity argument, but the interpreter case makes it starker
because the interpreter’s function is not artistic. The interpreter is not
making creative choices. The interpreter is not embodying a charac-
ter. The interpreter is providing a service, and the service is language
access. To racially regulate the provision of language access is to treat
language access as a performance rather than a right, and to treat it
as a performance is to subordinate the Deaf audience’s needs to the
hearing institution’s aesthetic preferences.
The irony is bitter. TDF’s mission is accessibility. TDF exists to
ensure that Deaf people, people with disabilities, and economically
disadvantaged audiences can experience live theatre. TDF adminis-
ters the TKTS discount ticket booth in Times Square. TDF runs acces-
sibility programs for multiple Broadway shows. TDF is the organiza-
tion that provides the infrastructure for ASL-interpreted performances,
audio-described performances for blind audience members, and open-
captioned performances for audience members who are deaf or hard
of hearing. The organization that exists to remove barriers to access
created a new barrier to access by applying a racial filter to the provi-
sion of an accessibility service. The interpreter was not being hired to
perform. The interpreter was being hired to provide access. And the
access was denied, not to the Deaf audience directly, but to the qual-
ified professional who would have provided it, because his skin was
the wrong color for the animals on stage.
The additional irony, which the next chapter will examine, is that
TDF is the same organization responsible for the accessibility pro-
grams at shows like “Oklahoma!,” where Ali Stroker, a wheelchair
user, won a Tony Award for a role not written for a wheelchair user.
TDF’s accessibility mission encompasses both the provision of inter-
preting services and the broader project of making Broadway available
to disabled audiences and performers. The organization simultane-
ously celebrates the casting of a disabled performer in a non-disabled
role (Stroker in “Oklahoma!”) and enforces racial restrictions on a
non-performing accessibility provider (Wann at “The Lion King”).
The first decision expands the definition of who belongs in the the-
atre. The second decision narrows it. Both decisions were made by
the same institution, in the same cultural moment, under the same ban-
ner of inclusion.
Wann’s own website later provided additional context that deep-
ened the case’s significance. He noted that after removing him from
the April “Lion King” assignment, TDF contacted him again months
later asking him to interpret “The Lion King” when another BIPOC
interpreter was unavailable on short notice. They also asked him to
participate in the interpreter team for “Wicked” alongside BIPOC in-
terpreters during the same period. The pattern was clear: Wann was
qualified enough to be the emergency backup and the trainer but not
qualified enough to be the primary interpreter when a racial match
was available. His expertise was valued when convenient and dis-
carded when inconvenient, and the variable determining convenience
was not his skill but his race. A commenter named Sherri, posting on
The Daily Moth’s coverage, identified the structural failure with pre-
cision: “TDF basically failed to vet and make sure an appropriate cast
of interpreters are available for this performance. They failed to fol-
low the chain of command.” The problem was not that TDF wanted
BIPOC interpreters for “The Lion King.” The problem was that TDF
had not built a system capable of reliably providing them, and when the
system failed, the organization’s response was to remove a qualified
white interpreter rather than to acknowledge the system’s inadequacy.
The case settled quickly and quietly. The terms were not dis-
closed. Wann wrote on social media that he looked “forward to the
review of the process that will emerge from this to hopefully benefit
the interpreting profession.” TDF issued no public statement of policy
change. Wann moved on, focusing on raising his children and develop-
ing ASL educational content rather than continuing to interpret Broad-
way shows. The system that produced the controversy continued to
operate. No structural reform was announced. No public reckoning
occurred. The episode entered the category of incidents that generate
two weeks of online outrage and then disappear, leaving the underly-
ing conditions unchanged.
But the underlying conditions matter, and this book insists on nam-
ing them. The condition is this: the American theatre has extended
the logic of casting identity so far beyond the stage that it now gov-
erns who may provide language access to disabled audience members.
The logic that began with the question “Who should play this role?”
has metastasized into the question “Who should be visible in any ca-
pacity within the theatrical space?” The first question is an artistic
question with legitimate answers rooted in authorial intent and direc-
tional vision. The second question is an institutional question with no
legitimate answer other than “whoever is best qualified to do the job.”
The progression this book has traced across its chapters is now vis-
ible as a single arc. In the Beckett chapter, the question was whether a
director could alter the playwright’s casting specifications. In the Wil-
son chapter, the question was whether an institution could override a
playwright’s cultural vision. In the Hamilton chapter, the question was
whether a playwright’s authorial casting choice could be generalized
into an institutional policy. In the Miracle Worker chapter, the ques-
tion was whether the performer must share the character’s disability.
In this chapter, the question has left the stage entirely. The interpreter
is not a creative participant. The interpreter is a service provider. And
still the logic of identity matching pursues the interpreter into the ac-
cessibility booth and demands to know what color the interpreter’s
skin is before allowing the interpreter to translate a show about lions.
Each chapter has moved the boundary of the identity matching de-
mand further from its origin. Each step was logical, given the previous
step. If the actor must match the character’s race, why not the direc-
tor? If the director, why not the interpreter? If the interpreter, why not
the usher, the house manager, the box office staff? The logic has no
natural terminus because the logic has no limiting principle. It applies
wherever identity is visible, and in a culture that has decided identity
is always visible and always significant, it applies everywhere.
The interpreter is not the actor. The interpreter is not the character.
The interpreter is not the playwright’s creation or the director’s vision.
The interpreter is a professional providing a service to a disabled au-
dience, and the service must be evaluated on the basis of professional
competence, not racial identity. Any other standard degrades the ser-
vice, harms the audience, and transforms an accessibility program into
an extension of the casting department. Keith Wann was not cast in
“The Lion King.” He was hired to translate it. The distinction should
not need to be drawn, but in a theatre culture that has lost the ability
to distinguish between identity and function, it does.
There is one more case to examine before the argument turns from
case studies to synthesis, and it is the case that tests the thesis most
honestly. What happens when a body on stage cannot do what the
character’s body is described as doing, and the result is not a violation
of the text but a revelation of it? Ali Stroker won a Tony Award in a
wheelchair, and the story of how that happened, and what it means, is
not as simple as either its champions or its critics have claimed.
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