Photo credit: Steve Italiano
Pink Umbrella Theater, a relative newcomer on Milwaukee’s theater scene, helps emerging artists with disabilities bloom. The company, founded in September 2018, offers classes and resources for students with disabilities who want to learn and perform on stage. Off the Cuff talked with the company’s founder, Katie Cummings.
Photo credit: Steve Italiano
Katie Cummings is the founder of Pink Umbrella Theater
How did Pink Umbrella Theater come to be?
I was working in a theater company where we created a program for students on the autism spectrum and very quickly for people with other developmental differences. Then, those students started to grow up, and they grew up into theater kids. They needed a place to do theater as an adult, which was one of the major reasons why Pink Umbrella Theater was created—to provide a platform for adult actors and artists with disabilities to create theater together.
I found out about this kind of theater at a conference in New York City in April of 2018. I felt very strongly about making sure that we had a place like that here in Milwaukee, something that allowed for all abilities to come together and experience theater, something that everybody should have access to.
How do you make theater more accessible for your students?
We ask parents and participants to let us know what their needs are at registration. And with that information, our teaching artists, who are trained to work with individuals with disabilities, craft their lessons around the needs in the classroom. We keep our class sizes small so we can really get to know our actors and we’re able to provide accommodations, whatever they need to be to feel successful in our rehearsal halls and in our classrooms.
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What sets your work apart on the stage?
In our classes, we teach musical theater, improvisation, Shakespeare… we will do those things, but the difference is that, if you were to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream with our company, it would incorporate sensory engagement into the environment. You would enter the environment and it would smell like the forest. The actors are breathing every part, every aspect of who they are as a human being into those characters. You will see the characters in ways that you’ve never seen before.
Right now, we are doing informal presentations at the end of each session, and we are looking at our next adventure: a virtual play. Our adults company members will be the actors in that play, and our hope is that your homes and the homes that we are invited into will become the stage in a sort of a scavenger hunt. Every audience member will receive a packet from us so that we are engaging their senses.
How is the current crisis affecting your operations?
Since the pandemic, we have been holding classes virtually. One way that we’re able to make it accessible is that, no matter whether we're in person or online, we keep our class sizes small. The pandemic has been a real eye opener: This is actually a really great place for our students to be, specifically those students who have sensory sensitivities and those who have transportation issues. Many of our students are really thriving in this format. We will always keep a virtual format, even when it’s safe for us to be back in person. It is hard to do theater in Zoom, but I think we will always have a digital component for our actors who are thriving in the digital world; we want to continue to nurture their craft in a state that is comfortable and accessible to them.
How are you weathering the pandemic?
We just found out that we are receiving funds from the United Performing Arts Fund, we are one of the new affiliate members—we're super excited about that, that funding will help kind of carry us through. We are lucky in the sense that our program is really young, it is only two years old, so we have really low overhead; we don’t have a building or anything, we’re running everything out of my home. We had 29 students take classes last summer, and we had 57 students take classes this summer. We are looking to hire teaching artists coast to coast to work with our actors.
On top of that, a wonderful family, the Silversteins, have issued a challenge grant. They are willing to match every dollar up to $10,000 donated during the month; it runs from November 1 until December 1. That money will help us pay for Zoom—we’ve got closed captions for all of our classes right now, but I have had inquiries from the deaf and hard of hearing community, so we will need to have an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter. It will help us pay our teaching artists, and we are still sending supplies at home to our participants as needed for our classes. We also pay our actors, director, fees, managers, like every other professional theater company.
Do you have a message for our readers?
I think that it is important for us as a society to make sure that every voice, verbal and nonverbal, is heard. The disabled community, our students and teaching artists have a story to tell—their story to tell. It is time for us as a society to listen, lean in and learn. Pink Umbrella is here to bring you the work of disabled actors and make sure that their stories are being told on stage and in the community. If we just play one small part in that, in that larger picture of making sure that the voices of the marginalized are heard, shared and respected, then…. cheers. If people believe in that, we would love to have their financial support, but also, we would like them to spread the message and come see our plays and let people know that there is a place for them. We’re here! It’s inclusive, it’s accessible for all.
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For more information, visit pinkumbrellatheater.org.
To read more Off the Cuff interviews, click here.
To read more articles by Jean-Gabriel Fernandez, click here.
