Sex, travel and disability: during Pride, two new plays, ‘Access Me’ and ‘Perceptual Archaeology’ centre disabled actors’ experiences

Having sex. Travelling somewhere appealing and unknown. Dancing.

It’s safe to say that most human beings undertake such activities and enjoy them. But the way disabled people experience them is rarely talked about.

Two autobiographical theatre productions taking stage during Queer Pride Month are changing that.

In “Access Me,” three queer male artists who are power wheelchair-users share their experiences of sex in a show that’s described as intimate, provocative — and incredibly hot.

The other, “Perceptual Archaeology (or How to Travel Blind)” dramatizes queer blind theatre artist Alex Bulmer’s experiences traveling in the U.S. and Europe, initially following the path of 19th-Century blind adventurer James Holman and continuing to explore out of her own interest and determination.

Both shows centre the creators’ experiences of physicality and embodiment.

“It’s definitely not for kids,” said Ken Harrower, one of “Access Me”’s creators/performers.

“As a disabled person, often our lives are painted as tragic, and I don’t feel that way,” said Frank Hull, another “Access Me” creator/performer. “My life needs to be celebrated because it’s beautiful. The way I have sex is different from an able-bodied person, and it’s beautiful.”

Harrower, who trained as an actor at the Toronto Film School, became interested in making his own work because “there aren’t too many acting roles for somebody like me,” he said. Through Cahoots Theatre, which supports and presents work by marginalized creators, Harrower met able-bodied director Jonathan Seinen, and the pair brought Hull and Andrew Gurza into the project, knowing that they wanted to make something focused on sexuality.

“It takes the taboo of sex and disability and puts it front and centre for audiences to look at in an unvarnished way,” said Gurza of the show. This includes inviting the audience to ask the performers about their experiences of sex. “Our job in that moment is to say, you’re not stupid for not knowing,” said Gurza.

Having all this be funny and playful is a central priority for the creators — there’s also a big dance party at the end of each performance — but there are difficult experiences underlying the piece.

“The gay community is so focused on body image,” said Harrower. “My experience overall hasn’t been all that great … a lot of people in the gay community aren’t open or accepting of disabled people in chairs,” he said.

And things are deteriorating. There are fewer and fewer social spaces in Toronto’s Gay Village that are physically accessible. “I don’t have access to even my own community,” said Hull. The show lays bare how “whether we’re talking about meeting somebody at a bar, or whether we’re talking about meeting somebody on an app, access for each of us has been so hard to find because of our disabilities,” said Gurza.

“Access Me” has been in development for eight years, and a workshop version won the inaugural Jon Kaplan Spotlight Award in the 2017 SummerWorks Festival. Having significant time and resources to develop the full version of the show was very important for all involved.

“We’re allowed to be disabled, to say to the powers that be, we’re sore today,” said Hull. “Within professional arts oftentimes we just push through and ‘suck it up, buttercup.’ But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Perceptual Archaeology” is based on a series of essays Bulmer wrote for BBC Radio 3 in which she traced adventurer Holman’s path. “I ended up having these five well-crafted essays that were written to be spoken out loud,” she said. “So in a way, they were already slightly off the page.”

Crow’s Theatre initially invited Bulmer to make a podcast series during the pandemic about her experiences of travel, but she asked instead to make an in-person show. “I felt really strongly that it needed to be a piece that had a physical presence, my body in space, in order to really capture all the themes,” she said.

In both “Access Me” and “Perceptual Archaeology,” a person appears onstage to support the disabled performers. In “Access Me,” Jordan Campbell occasionally attends to Harrower, Hull and Gurza’s physical needs.

Bulmer called this “theatricalizing access”; it’s something she’s been interested in for years. She shares the stage in her show with Enzo Massara, who feeds her lines through an earpiece, helps her move around the stage, and periodically describes what’s happening to make the show accessible for blind as well as sighted audiences.

Bulmer said that, in theory, she could have memorized her text, but “I did not want the stress of having to know all my lines and possibly get disoriented in space,” she said. Having Massara feed her lines “allows me to focus on the more important things.” For Bulmer, the important things include navigating a physically complex performance safely: At various points she climbs a ladder, lies down on the floor, and exits and re-enters the theatre holding Massara’s arm. As she and director Leah Cherniak rehearsed the show with Massara, his role became increasingly integral and resonant.

In the pieces Bulmer evocatively describes what it’s like to physically navigate unknown spaces while also dealing with the displacement, linguistic differences and other disorienting experiences of travel.

She felt there was a theatre piece in the material but couldn’t find a way in until she showed the essays to her friend and collaborator Cherniak, who is able-bodied. “I related to it partly because of my own experiences traveling … even as a sighted person, how terrifying it can be and how boring it can be, and how lost you can get in seeing things, and how do you make meaning of it?,” said Cherniak.

“It’s been so playful and completely rooted in discovery, just like travel,” said Bulmer of the creative process. “I was delighted with how much freedom I found in the work. It was very much through the body in space that we found so much of the theatricality,” she said.

The fact that her run coincides with Pride Month was “a really lucky fluke,” said Bulmer. “As soon as one of the members of our team wished me Happy Pride on June 1, I thought, ‘oh this is good’.”

In both instances, these shows challenge what Hull calls “the super crip mentality — the inspirational disabled person who has overcome their disability,” he said. “It’s about celebrating who we are, period,” said Hull. “No tragedy here.”

“Access Me” plays at the Aki Studio, 585 Dundas St. E. from June 16-24. Tickets at nativeearth.ca and 416-531-1402. “Perceptual Archaeology” plays at Crow’s Theatre, 345 Carlaw Ave., through June 25. crowstheatre.com and (647) 341-7390 ext. 1010.