O’Dell began to research. She met with Jonathan Shmidt Chapman of New York City’s Trusty Sidekick Theater Company, which created Up and Away, a production commissioned by Lincoln Center and designed for neurodivergent children in 2014. Chapman pointed O’Dell to Tim Webb, director of Oily Cart Theatre in London, which pioneered the concept of “sensory theatre” in London in 1988. So she went to London.
“I was so inspired on the plane ride back, I wrote the lyrics to the first song for our first show,” said O’Dell. “I just jumped in.”
O’Dell paired her children’s theatre expertise with Webb’s advice to partner with occupational therapists, special education teachers, and parents and students with disabilities. Soon FARM! was touring around elementary schools in the Michigan area, with O’Dell and her team learning a lot as they went.
“Every person who is neurodiverse is different,” said O’Dell. “A lot of kids who are neurodiverse don’t like loud noises. That doesn’t mean we don’t have loud noises in our show—we just offer the option to have headphones, or we warn them ahead of time.”
The same year that FARM! premiered, O’Dell attended the very first Big Umbrella Festival, a now annual weekend hosted by Lincoln Center that brings together artists, educators, and students to share new and unique approaches to multisensory performances.
“I thought after that that we would have this huge, like, burst forward,” said O’Dell. “But there really wasn’t. I think, in part, because of Covid.”
The pandemic halted the planned national tour of FARM! too, but O’Dell and her team are getting their stride again, and staged their first mixed-audience show—What If Wilhelmina, based on the book by Joseph Belisle—this past spring.
But at the moment O’Dell is more or less a one-woman show. She trains ushers and front-of-house staff, meets with audio and lighting designers, creates educational materials drawn from special education resources, and sometimes takes on design roles herself, in addition to her regular duties. In fact, she hopes to develop a minor or certificate in Theatre for Youth and Community at MSU and would like to see more inclusive training in theatre in general.
“It’s a hurdle,” she said. “It’s about resources. It’s about getting everyone on our faculty on board to say, ‘This is important. This is what we need to move forward.’ I feel like we’re still a long way off.”
There are some efforts to create standardized practices and training systems, but none are focused on training theatremakers to create for audiences with diverse sensory needs. Spectrum Theatre Ensemble’s NICE (Neurodiverse Inclusive Certified Entertainment) program, for example, trains and accredits entertainment venues to make every performance of their production seasons accessible to neurodivergent audiences. The Contemporary American Theatre Festival in West Virginia became the first NICE-certified theatre this year after implementing sensory-inclusive performances and staff training on neurodiversity, among other initiatives.
The Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education in Boston focuses on teaching performing and visual arts effectively to students with disabilities. The academic programs for disabled students are also connected to a masters program that aims to endow more educators with the methods and tools for teaching disabled students, with a focus on those with autism spectrum disorders.
“In the standard undergraduate music teacher licensure education program, there are not pedagogical tools for working with anyone who learns differently for any reason,” said Rhoda Bernard, managing director and assistant chair of music education at the institute. “This is a gap in one way that my institute seeks to fill.”
But O’Dell is holding out hope. After all, her experience with FARM! has changed her idea of what a “perfect show” is and how impactful theatre can be when it’s made for everyone. And as Kinetic Light’s Lawson noted, the amount of work for a single production can be intense, but it’s worth it.
“We’re creating this place for people to come together,” she said. “It’s not just changing the way someone offers access or adding a mode of access. This is social change.”
Crystal Paul (she/her), a Chicago-based writer and editor, specializes in journalism about community, race, and the arts.
