Hi, I'm Caitlin! I started my theatre journey as a kid with a one-line appearance in a family friend's civic play. I wasn't particularly impressed and didn't do much until about ten years later as an undergrad at Earlham College. I walked into a theatre interest meeting and left with a new course on my schedule and a new job: sound tech. By the end of my freshman year, I'd added a theatre major to my interdisciplinary social sciences program, and I was involved in at least one full production as well as student company activities each semester.

 

At the same time as I was falling in love with performing arts, I was going on a fairly long and complicated quest to figure out what exactly was going on with my body that made me hurt all the time. At 18, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and began using a cane to help my mobility, but I still wasn't satisfied with how that diagnosis lined up with my lived experience. I did a lot of research, talked to a lot of friends and a lot of doctors, and eventually got the much more accurate label of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that can cause a huge spectrum of systemic symptoms.

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If you've worked in a theatre pretty much anywhere in the world, you won't be surprised when I say that trying to navigate stages as a cane user was incredibly frustrating. Old buildings with narrow staircases, ladders, catwalks, amphitheater steps, and more, and that's just on the mobility side! Seeing the barriers between me and my newfound career fired me up, and I began to teach myself about disability rights and advocacy and to advocate for change in the spaces I used.

 

After graduating with my bachelor's degree, I lived in Indianapolis for a handful of years working as a preschool teacher by day, freelance sound designer by night, and self-guided disability studies student whenever I could find a moment to spare. I enrolled as a graduate student at Syracuse University in 2021, beginning as a master's student in Cultural Foundations of Education and Disability Studies before transferring to the PhD program.

 

While a grad student, I've had a few incredible opportunities as an accessibility consultant and advocate. In 2022, I worked with Barrington Stage Company on the world premiere of All of Me by Laura Winters. This play is a love story between two wheelchair users who use text-to-speech technology to speak, both of whom were played by disabled actors. In my role as accessibility consultant, I taught the cast and crew about disability history and rights, the history of AAC (alternative and augmentative communication) technology, and why a poor disabled girl might feel some financial pressure in a welfare state. All of Me is headed Off-Broadway in spring 2024 produced by The New Group.

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I am so incredibly passionate about disability, access, and inclusion. I have a million suggestions, a million soapbox speeches locked and loaded, and a million ways I want to change theatre for the better.