News Article: “‘Human Museum’ focuses spotlight on problems facing the disabled”

IMG_8918.jpg
IMG_8919.jpg

Title

News Article: “‘Human Museum’ focuses spotlight on problems facing the disabled”

Catalog Entry

A cut-out newspaper article, written by Andrienne Clark, describes an original theatrical production titled “The Human Museum,” a production created and performed by students at Fitchburg State College, along with guests from Edge Hill University College in Ormskirk, England. Three months in the making, in downtown Fitchburg at the Americulture Arts Festival in the spring of 1997, their first of many performances came to life.

The article begins with an introduction of the real-life story that formed the basis for a scene in one of the productions held on campus in the Weston Auditorium. When a man asks  a young woman with a hearing impairment to dance, she doesnot hear him; he quickly loses patience and walks away. Had that man waited a few more moments for the young woman to adjust her hearing aid, perhaps he would have gotten the opportunity to dance with her, made a connection, and who knows what could have happened because of his patience. The lack of patience, however, lost him that chance. Professor and theater coordinator Kelly Morgan stated that “many people miss out on opportunities because of their impatience with the disabled,” and the scene portrayed proved that to be true.  The able-bodied tend to be hasty, always in a rush. Those who are differently-abled have had to learn to take experiences slower, grant themselves the time they need to adapt to situations.

The production serves to bring awareness to commonly unnoticed or dismissed issues. An adamant subject of the play is the discrimination against those who are disabled. Everyday, the less-abled are underestimated and underappreciated. It is not, however, just people with disabilities that these performances stand up for, but people of different sexualities, gender, and race. Time spent creating predispositions for those we may not understand and discriminating against them due to those predisposed opinions is time wasted. We should not waste the precious time we have on this Earth diminishing each other; we should be accepting and welcoming. 

Impressively, the “Human Museum” was put on a total of five times and each time it brought a different social issue into the eyes of the audience. Professor Morgan states that the impact he’s witnessed these productions make are “always the same, and there is always more than one.” After watching this production, “the audiences ignorance is well exposed.” Frequently I have personally witnessed the existence of the ​”if I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist”​ mindset, and that, I believe, is what he could mean through the use of the informative play series. The “many epiphanies” the professor sees throughout the crowd is proof of the ignorance of those among us towards the social injustices in the world.

In the scene called “The Blind Doctor,” “a medical doctor ignores his patient who is in a wheelchair, and directs all his questions to the patient’s companion.” This is the truth about the lack of acknowledgement and respect towards the disabled. To dismiss the patient entirely, talking to their companion as if they were a caregiver is unnecessary. Disabled does not mean incapable. The disabled tend to not get the same chances as those around them simply because it may take them a little longer to do what the able-bodied consider "easy: tasks. They may have to do these things differently, but they are not unable. Disability is not a weakness, and differences are not debilitating.

My favorite statement made by Professor Morgan is “everything is based on fear, but we cannot always look at fear as a bad thing.” Fear comes from ignorance. Humans are afraid of what we do not know. If we as a society understood fear for what it was, perhaps we could use it to inspire others to become further educated and have more of an open mind rather than propelling ourselves away from the disabled and isolating them entirely. As a society, we must discover how to learn from those who are different from us. We tend to avoid and isolate those different than a societal norm due to a lack of understanding or fear based solely on what we think we know or perhaps what we don’t know at all. This fear, this lack of willingness to learn, prevents us from actually getting to know how special and capable these people are. People with disabilities are human beings, who have well-earned their right to be treated like anyone else in receiving recognition and acknowledgement.

Bibliography

Morgan, Kelly. Personal interview. 1 Nov. 2019.

Artifact Owner

Fitchburg State University Disability Services

Artifact Condition

This artifact is in great condition, glued to a piece of white paper in a clear sleeve of a binder full of other articles and artifacts

Artifact Material

Paper

Catalog Entry Author(s)

Jillian Garreffi, Student, Fitchburg State University

Editor(s)

Christopher Sutcliffe, Student, Fitchburg State University

Collection

Citation

“News Article: “‘Human Museum’ focuses spotlight on problems facing the disabled”,” Cultural Heritage through Image, accessed March 29, 2024, https://culturalheritagethroughimage.omeka.net/items/show/111.

Output Formats