Dramaturgical

How to Dance in Ohio

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

WHEN I WAS 8 YEARS-OLD,

my younger brother Noah was diagnosed with autism, but thereafter, no one ever dared to say the word “autism” around him. As is the case for so many Autistic individuals, those close to Noah knew about his diagnosis, but I sensed a certain fear that saying or acknowledging “autism” would further differentiate my brother from his peers because of something we–and so many–didn’t understand. So, while he saw specialist after specialist privately, when we were out in the world, the word “ autism” and conversations around it felt off limits. And that wasn’t unique to my brother’s case; there were simply so many misconceptions about autism floating around in the early 2000s.

So, nearly 20 years later, when I heard about a new musical centering 7 Autistic young adults and their coming-of-age stories, I felt deeply drawn to such a piece of art that might–following in the footsteps of its source material and building on the progress made in the 7 years since the documentary’s premier–help to open doors on talking about what autism really is: an integral part of what makes my brother and all other Autistic people who they are. And it did.

As I began to work on Jacob Yandura and Rebekah Greer Melocik’s How to Dance in Ohio, it provided an opportunity to unpack and understand real life through storytelling as great pieces of art often do. As a result, I found myself having the conversations we never dared to have 20 years ago, understanding that autism isn’t something to avoid talking about – rather, talking about it, learning about it, and centering Autistic voices is how we understand it. And while we still have so far to go (for example, it’s still legal to pay disabled workers below minimum wage in this country), my hope is that using art to shine a spotlight on necessary change can help.

So, I’m deeply grateful to my collaborators–my Autistic collaborators most of all–for creating a piece that fosters that conversation. And it is

my aim that the show you’re about to see will help foster this conversation for you and your community, whether you are currently personally connected to autism or not.

For our company, that conversation has been rich and refreshing. Through a partnership with CO/ LAB Theater Group and thanks to the guidance of our ASD Creative Consultant Ava Xiao-Lin Rigelhaupt and Director of Community Engagement Becky Leifman, we’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to reexamine our practices both in how we make art and how we make more intentionally inclusive, welcoming, and compassionate workplaces. Because as Ava often says “It’s not just being invited to the party; it’s being asked to dance.” And while this exploration was motivated by a desire to make our workplace the best that it could be for our 9 Autistic performers as well as our Autistic staff members, it turned into something bigger than that. It turned into a lesson in how we can all benefit from making our spaces more inclusive, open, and compassionate – not just for Autistic individuals, but for everyone. So, I’m excited to continue learning and developing this aspect of our work as we continue to tell this story.

And while there are so many individuals who have been part of telling that story over the years, I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to acknowledge–singularly–the legendary Hal Prince who was the piece’s original director prior to his passing in July of 2019. His impact on the creation of this show was immense, but moreover, his impact on the American theater was indelible. When I first joined this team, one of our exceptional producers Ben Holtzman, who had been Hal’s mentee throughout the final years of his life, gave me thirteen audio recordings of meetings with Hal talking about How to Dance in Ohio and four copies of the musical’s script with Hal’s notes in the margins. These notes ranged from dramaturgical feedback for the writers to ideas for how Hal wanted to stage certain scenes. And so, these notes became my north star as the rest of the creative team and I figured out how to honor the DNA of what Hal had begun while the musical grew and evolved. It’s part of why the scenic design you’re looking at is an homage to Hal’s iconic magic black box, it’s part of why this show is structured like one of Hal’s traditional “concept musicals,” and it’s why–if you take a look in the upper house right corner of our stage, you might notice a little nod to Hal himself.

I never had the privilege of talking to Hal directly about this piece, but I know that this subject matter was deeply important to him and that he saw this work as both a piece of theater and a piece of activism–and that’s what it’s all about for me.

So with that, I invite you to enjoy How to Dance in Ohio.

Sincerely,

SAMMI CANNOLD

How to Dance in Ohio

A BRIDGE TO UNDERSTANDING

AN INTERVIEW WITH FILMMAKER ALEXANDRA SHIVA INTERVIEWED BY JOSEPH WHELAN

The inspiration for the Alexandra Shiva’s Peabody Award-winning documentary, How to Dance in Ohio, came from a very personal place. The filmmaker has a friend whose daughter is autistic, and when the girl turned 18, Shiva wondered what coming into adulthood, coming of age, would be like for her.With two successful documentaries behind her, Shiva thought trying to answer this question could be the subject for her next project. A recommendation from a colleague led her to Columbus, Ohio, and Dr. Emilio Amigo and Amigo Family Counseling, a center for people living with autism. On her first visit, Dr. Amigo told her he was working with some of his clients on a play called Law & Order: Fairytale Unit. He then explained that the next project would be a spring formal dance and that the group would spend three months in therapy preparing. The filmmaker found her film. Shiva spent three months with Dr. Amigo and his clients and some of their family members filming what would become How to Dance in Ohio, which in turn is the inspiration and the source for this musical.

Joseph Whelan: How did the idea for adapting the documentary into a musical first come to you? Who proposed it to you?

Alexandra Shiva: Jacob (composer Jacob Yandura) and Rebekah (book writer and lyricist Rebekah Greer Melocik)* reached out to me years ago and wanted to talk about making a musical. We had a wonderful meeting and I heard all about where the idea came from for them, Jacob’s connection to the subject matter, and why they wanted to do it. Right around the same time, I remember Hal Prince,

ALEXANDRA SHIVA. 

who was a dear friend and someone I greatly admired, calling me and saying that he decided he wanted to do his next musical and it was How to Dance in Ohio. He had talked to Ben (producer Ben Holtzman) and Ben knew a young composer and lyricist team who were also interested and would I like him to direct it.

JW: Wow.

AS: I was like, I mean, I’d just fall over right now. I mean sure, “whatever you want, whatever you want, Hal.” And so that was what I knew, and I just said, “Please go forth, do whatever you want.” That was the beginning. And now, of course, Sammi Cannold who came on as the director after Hal passed away has done such a beautiful job interpreting the work Jacob and Rebekah did with Hal, and continuing to bring the musical to life with her own fresh and brilliant perspective.

JW: What was your involvement after that?

AS: A couple of times Hal would ask me for outtakes or for interviews, transcripts, and things like that. We’d send those over and it was amazing. I did not hear anything until they’d been at it for like, I think, a year already. The other thing that happened was that I brought the musical team to Ohio. We all went together to Ohio so that I could introduce them to Amigo (Dr. Emilio Amigo) and the group. We went and had a similar kind of experience to what I had when I started making the documentary, which was really important for this group of people (the documentary participants). We

had a sort of Town Hall, where they could ask tons of questions, feel part of the process and understand what it was, and the musical team could get to know them better and understand more about what happens (at the counseling center) firsthand.

JW: How did that go?

AS: We had this incredible meeting where Jacob and Rebekah met the whole group of people from the documentary, and that experience became a scene in the musical. The picking your brain scene in the musical comes from that meeting. Amigo had this Styrofoam head with lots of questions sticking out of it. Everyone had asked their questions and different people had to read those questions, not the people who had written them. It was really wonderful. It was an amazing experience. A lot of people from the counseling center had an issue with the fact that we had filmed for so long and yet the movie became about three people, and they felt a little left out. They expressed they were hoping the musical was going to be more ensemble and they were also hoping that they could play themselves. That’s what I remember from that evening. It was quite something. So that’s my involvement. My involvement is source material and sending as much as I could to help. There are scenes in the musical, not a lot, that are from our outtakes that didn’t end up in the movie, which is fascinating, that inspired either songs or scenes in the musical. I went to the reading a year and a half ago, and I went to an open rehearsal in New York recently, and it was extraordinary because it is its own. It takes the best of the documentary, the essence and the spirit of the documentary, and then it is its own incredible work of art that is separate from that. I think this is a very unusual thing to happen, where you have taken a work of art and you’ve

JESSICA SULLIVAN AND CAROLINE MCKENZIE. © COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE 

expanded on it and made it entirely its own separate work of art.

JW: From your perspective, what do you think the musical theatre adaptation can do for the audience that’s different than what the documentary can do?

AS: That is an interesting question. I mean the documentary has a limit, which is documenting real life. There is only so much you can actually do with the material. I always say that it is a combination of what happened, what happened when you happened to be there, what happened when you happened to be there when the camera was on, what you really wish had happened and then what you can make out of that. But with the musical, you have that plus whatever you wish to make out of it. And so, a lot of what I would have wished was possible in the edit but wasn’t because you have the limitation of fixed material, can happen in the musical. It was sort of a magical thing to see that you could take a character and explore “what it would be like if . . .” What it would be like if this person went in this direction, what it would be like if the essence of this person could bend in this arch and arrive at this place – start here and end here instead of working with fixed material. They are not working with fixed material, so I actually feel like there is a limitlessness, there is a limitless quality to what is there, what they can create, and I do think it gives the audience more to engage with, more to relate to, a fuller experience actually.

JW: In one interview, you called the documentary “a bridge to understanding.” Is there something about the immediacy and visceral connection with the stage that transcends understanding, hits you a different way? Do you think that’s a part of what the musical can accomplish?

that I was trying to say the musical can do that and then some. I think the musical can do what the documentary does, which creates that bridge and allows people to walk in the shoes of other people for that period of time. But I do think that because its musical, it can get into your head, and it can get into your heart in a different way, which I think is extraordinary. I mean it did feel transcendent watching the rehearsal and the music sort of takes you into places that are very emotionally resonant beyond what the documentary can do. I think it’s so beautiful. I love, love the musical and I think that it’s so beautifully done. And I think it’s very special and really extraordinary work of art all by itself, separate from any of the source material. It really is the dream of what you can make of it.

JW: In a way there may be two audiences for this. There are neurotypical people and there are people who have experience with non-neurotypical, either directly or through family or friends. What’s been your experience of the difference in reactions to the documentary for those groups of people, those people who can personally relate to it and those who are perhaps at some remove?

AS: It’s been very important to us that the autism community feels seen and heard. When we were doing screenings, we showed it to a lot of people and had a lot of feedback and I know that’s been the same with the musical. I think that is wildly important. But I think that what was wonderful in the documentary—that is going to be true even more so in the musical—is that these are feelings everybody has. Everyone gets nervous, and everyone has had the experience of going to their first dance or being scared to talk to someone or having a human experience. So, it’s taking a human experience that maybe is more exaggerated in the nonneurotypical person but is absolutely a part of everyone’s life. The documentary and the musical are about connecting and about showing the ways we are similar, not the ways we are different. It’s not highlighting difference; it is highlighting similarity. To me it feels like it is really going to play beautifully to both audiences for different reasons. The audiences who have no understanding of autism are going to enjoy it because it’s a part of humanity, and the people who are part of the autism community or who have been touched some way by non-neurotypical are going to experience it as being seen and relate on a whole different level.

JW: The young people who are in the film, they must be in their mid-tolate 20’s now, and some of them are going to come and see the show and see themselves represented on stage. What do you think that experience will be like for them?

AS: They were so great. They came to Sundance when we premiered there and we had a big screening in Ohio, and they’re old hands at this. I think they are used to this. We had conversations and I think Dr. Amigo is very good at prepping the group. He takes their questions and concerns so seriously, and so we had calls with him, and I often participated when the musical team would interact with the subjects. I think that was helpful. But they get it, they get that this isn’t them, that some of this has happened to someone

DR. EMILIO AMIGO. © COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE 

else, that some of it is made up, but it never feels negative. It’s not like anyone is made to look bad. I don’t think they’ll have a bad reaction. I think that they’re going to think it’s fun and sort of bizarre. And it does feel true to the request that Jacob and Rebekah got when they got to Ohio, which was “we wish we were more in it. We wish it was more ensemble.” And I do feel like they took that and went with it, so I really think the whole community in Columbus is going to feel good about it.

JW: So, in creating this project and letting it move to the stage, you created an opportunity for seven extraordinary autistic actors to have a great opportunity to practice their craft, to practice their art and work. How do you feel about your part is creating this opportunity?

AS: Nothing makes me happier. Really. Absolutely nothing makes me happier than how they’ve chosen to cast the show and these extraordinary young people. It just feels so right and so beautiful and literally nothing makes me happier about this than that. *For a conversation with Jacob Yandura and Rebekah Greer Melocik check out the podcast Syracuse (On) Stage.

CENTRAL NEW YORK Resources

ARISE

Our mission is to work with people of all abilities to create a fair and just community in which everyone can fully participate. https://ariseinc.org/

ACCES-VR

The NYS Education Department’s Office of Adult Career and Continuing Education Services-Vocational Rehabilitation (ACCESVR) assists individuals with disabilities to obtain, maintain and advance in employment and to support independent living through training, education, rehabilitation, and career development. http://www.acces.nysed.gov/vr

NEW YORK STATE OFFICE FOR PEOPLE WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

The New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) is responsible for coordinating services for New Yorkers with developmental disabilities, including intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism, Prader-Willi syndrome and other neurological impairments. It provides services directly and through a network of approximately 500 nonprofit service providing agencies, with about 80 percent of services provided by the private nonprofits and 20 percent provided by staterun services. https://opwdd.ny.gov/

GOLISANO CENTER FOR SPECIAL NEEDS

The new Golisano Center for Special Needs is poised to meet the challenges that children with I/DD and their families face through enhanced clinical care, education, basic research, and initiatives to promote inclusion and community building. It will provide comprehensive, coordinated and scientifically based medical and behavioral care for children and adolescents. https://www.upstate.edu/specialneeds/

ARC OF ONONDAGA

Since 1951, Arc of Onondaga has been one of the largest providers of services to people with developmental disabilities in Onondaga County. We currently support over 1,000 people and their families through a variety of programs and services. With more than 30 different sites throughout Central New York, Arc provides a wide array of opportunities including residential, day, employment services, and recreation programs. https://www.arcon.org/

THE AUTISTIC SELF ADVOCACY NETWORK

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization run by and for autistic people. ASAN is a national grassroots disability rights organization for the autistic community. We fight for disability rights. We work to make sure autistic people are included in policy-making, so that laws and policies meet our community’s needs. We work to support all forms of self-advocacy and to change the way people think about autism. Our members and supporters include autistic adults and youth, cross-disability advocates, and non-autistic family members, professionals, educators, and friends. https://autisticadvocacy.org/

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR DISABILITY RESOURCES

The Center for Disability Resources works with the campus community to reduce environmental barriers that impact student learning and encourage universal design and inclusion. CDR provides individualized accommodations for the classroom, testing, and living environments when necessary to ensure access. Additionally, our Academic Support staff meets with students one-on-one throughout the school year and, assists them to develop time-management, and organizational skills, note-taking strategies, and provides referrals for other campus resources. CDR offers opportunities for engagement beyond accommodations such as Workforce Recruitment program and the Delta Alpha Pi International honor society. https://disabilityresources.syr.edu/

THE SELF ADVOCACY ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK STATE

The Self-Advocacy Association of New York State, Inc., is an organization founded, and led, by people with developmental disabilities for people with developmental disabilities. We promote the awareness and recognition of the civil rights and responsibilities which include the opportunities and choices of equal citizenship. We speak up for ourselves and others. https://sanys.org/

THE CENTER ON DISABILITY AND INCLUSION AT SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

The Center on Disability and Inclusion (CDI) at Syracuse University is a disability-related research center that works to develop and implement initiatives promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of school and society—both locally and globally. Bringing together decades of disability leadership and driven by the belief that all people deserve access to rich, rewarding, and inclusive lives, the School of Education launched the new collaborative Center on Disability and Inclusion (CDI) in 2020. While our work broadly addresses all aspects of disability and inclusion, we focus specifically on the areas of neurodiversity and intellectual and developmental disability. Our work supports people from early childhood through adulthood, and we serve as a hub for disability and inclusion on campus, engaging students, faculty, and staff from multiple colleges, departments, and units within the university, while conducting research, leading advocacy initiatives, and providing technical assistance in the broader regional, national, and global communities. The CDI is home to the Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education, the Inclusion and Communication Initiatives, the Center on Human Policy, the PreEmployment Transition Program, the Seybold Neurodiversity at SU Project, and the Mid-State Partnership (including the Regional partnership Center the School-Age and Early Childhood Family and Community Engagement Centers). https://disabilityinclusioncenter.syr.edu/

THE KELBERMAN CENTER

The Kelberman Center is the leading provider of autism services for children, adults and families in the Mohawk Valley and Central New York. https://www.kelbermancenter.org/

For a more complete list of resources visit our accessibility page.