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For those of you who aren't in the autistic/disability community, here's what's going on with Sia's movie and some lessons for us, ok?
Sia has written, produced, and directed a movie about an autistic teenage girl... played by Maddie Ziegler. Autistic and disabled actors and advocates have criticized this casting choice. The trailer is not particularly promising, either, as it pushes some tired tropes.
Sia's response to even mild criticism about this has been particularly dismal; she's been defensive, doubled down. It comes off really poorly especially because Sia herself has disabilities many autistic people can understand.
Sia has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is a common comorbidity with autism and may share a genetic overlap. She also famously struggles with anxiety and social/performance phobias.
I think Sia might even have felt a kinship with this community and felt hurt that they didn't credit her good intentions, while autistic fans and other critics felt unheard by someone they thought might be willing to understand them.
But good intentions from someone in a position of more social power will not go very far to HELP a marginalized community if those intentions are not accompanied by action... which also usually involves CHANGE on the part of that power player.
Unfortunately Sia claims to have researched autism for 3 years, and also claims that this is the first she's heard of Auti$m Speak$'s checkered reputation. If the latter statement is true, it would suggest to me that any research she has done has barely scratched the surface.
Maddie had been announced as the star of this movie since 2015, so I'm not clear on casting and this timeline: Sia has said that using an autistic actor "was" cruel, not kind, suggesting she had hired one and replaced her with Maddie. https://twitter.com/Sia/status/1329723656768024577?s=20
She said that the autistic actor found it "extremely stressful and overwhelming." https://twitter.com/Sia/status/1329740727237177344?s=20
And NOW we have come to a personal soapbox. You *cannot* cast a disabled actor and expect their disabilities to disappear or for them to be able to adapt to the constraints you are used to. If the environment is stressful and overwhelming, what can you change to help your actor?
In my experience with theatre, I've found that many directors will happily cast a talented, disabled actor and then have NO IDEA how their process needs to change in order to accommodate their disability - and often their professional inexperience.
But listen up buckos. It is not a disabled employee's job to adapt to the work environment. Particularly here in the States, where we got a little thing called the ADA, it is the employer's job to provide reasonable accommodations.
(Obviously, reasonable accommodations can mean a number of things and there might be some disagreements and questions, but it's an essential conversation.)
And as artists, it's our job to be creative about communicating our message involving, using, and respecting reasonable accommodations. With every real attempt at increasing accessibility in our art, we have the opportunity to make our art form more expansive.
The answer to all this is NOT "just don't cast disabled actors." You definitely should. Disabled collaborators are essential if you want to change prevailing ableist narratives in art. But be aware that YOU need to change YOUR process.
And what you DON'T do is blame autistic people for "maybe" just being bad actors. https://twitter.com/Sia/status/1329738992519147521?s=20
(And also, let's talk about "bad" acting. Though I'm sure raw talent exists among autistic and other disabled actors-- some actors really are extremely good with very little experience or training...
we need to grapple with the fact that many autistic and disabled actors, because they have been denied opportunities or not had access to that amazing college theatre program, will need extra performance resources that directors are not used to providing... and guess what folks
those performance resources might have to look different than what you think... because they've got to be accommodating and accessible)
(In case the tweets are deleted, here are screenshots) https://twitter.com/SpookyAnarchist/status/1329782880625713155?s=20
