Last night I saw a funny, touching, and creative piece of theater called A Brief History of all Things performed by the Miracle Project Players, a theater group made up of children and teens with autism, special needs, learning disabilities, and their siblings.
Over the course of 20 weeks the young people use techniques from improv theater to write the story, compose the music and lyrics, and choreograph a dance. The resulting 60-minute devised musical theatre production began with the calling to order of a meeting of the Genius Club, a ragtag group of 14 boys and girls who make decisions by expressing their complete disdain for any idea proposed and then going ahead with it anyway. One of the members has found a way to time travel and he cheerfully proposes that the club try it out. The group, which reminded me of my department meetings at Rutgers, meets his suggestion with grumbling, disagreement, and skepticism (and some concern for the disruption of the timeline). However, unlike my academic colleagues and I, the group jumps into a series of adventures that take them back in time to save Abraham Lincoln, hear FDR’s inaugural address, meet and sing with Michael Jackson, and pay tribute to Whitney Huston. As the young people sing in the final song, the time tour was a window into their interests and passions.
As a developmentalist I so appreciated the ways the kids were able to be who they are—they stared off into space, they had small repetitive movements, they spoke under their breath and at the same time they were able to perform as other than who they are—they said their lines, they sang the songs, and most movingly they performed as an ensemble. At times I could literally see them choosing to support the play, to bring it into existence rather than to just do what they “normally” do. That to me is the power of performance—we do not have to stop being ourselves, but we are freed up to be other than ourselves at the same time. Aaron Feinstein, the director of the Miracle Project in NYC (the program was begun in California by Elaine Hall and is featured in an HBO documentary Autism the Musical) and ActionPlay says that he has no interest in “fixing” the kids; he wants to give them an opportunity to create theater as the individuals that they are. I couldn’t agree more. We need more people like Aaron, and Elaine Hall, and my friend and colleague Social Therapist Christine LaCerva who do not let a diagnosis keep them from relating to all young people as being capable of development. On June 8th I will be moderating an event called The Human Cost of Diagnosis with Christine, Lois Holzman, an outspoken critic of the diagnostic model, and sociologist Gil Eyal, author of The Autism Matrix.






