Inclusion: Past, present and future

The Inclusive Theatre Initiative’s purpose is to create “opportunities for people with disabilities to be theatre professionals, creators, performers and audience members.”

Matrix accomplished this throughout 2009 in many ways. Some performances offered  American Sign Language interpretation. Audio Description, which allows people who are blind to follow along with the action of the play, and Touch Tours, which allow people who are blind to explore the set and meet the actors pre-show, were offered at several performances. Matrix also offered Braille, large print and CD recordings of the programs.

The biggest accomplishment was the completion of a three-year project funded by The Jewish Fund. It began with storytelling circles called Jambalayas, to meet people and gather stories. Matrix used various mediums such as sound, movement, visual art, and verbal story telling to connect people so they could share their stories.

This led to a writer’s circle of community members who wrote Decide Tonight. The group was diverse, and really enjoyed going through the writing process with each other.

In March 2009, Matrix premiered the culminating work Decide Tonight. There were a number of people with disabilities involved in the production, some of them from the writer’s group. It also drew a large number of audience members with disabilities, and even offered chances to involve the audience if they chose to join in.

For 2010, Matrix wants to continue building the audience base and getting the information out to people with disabilities, so that they know what Matrix is doing. Matrix's School of Theatre is also working on making its arts education classes inclusive.

Matrix will be going to “QuestFest,” in Washington, D.C. this March to learn about visual theatre to reach out to the hard-of-hearing and Deaf communities through theatre. This will also work in creating opportunities for other theatres to learn about and use audio description through Matrix’s resources. In addition, researching captioning is a goal for the coming year, so that Matrix will be able to better serve people who are hard of hearing as members of the audience. Matrix also hopes to create a clearing house of information on activities in the arts for people with disabilities through IAN, Inclusive Arts Network, with VSA Arts of Michigan.

For more information about ITI at Matrix, please contact Jen Boyak at jboyak@matrixtheatre.org.