By Kelsey Maurine Brickl
I was genuinely looking forward to the performance. I wanted to cover it professionally and had conducted interviews with audience members for my coverage beforehand. Unfortunately, my access needs weren’t met, and the Haimes staff demanded I leave, then stopped the show. That’s when the crowd decided I was an enemy and a scapegoat. Alone in my wheelchair, I asserted my rights despite Haimes staff claiming not to have signed documents they had and failing to identify laws behind their non-compliant policies. Ultimately, I departed on my own with police who helped me file a complaint for harassment. Even as I left, I was being abused by the mob who had come to this show to laugh about disability. I don’t think I’ll be returning to the Haimes any time soon. I’ve been through a lot as a Disabled person, but today shocked me.
Today, as the Founder and Director of Ghost Light Access, I attempted to attend The Imaginary Invalid at the Todd Haimes Theatre, produced by Roundabout Theatre Company. My intention was to view the entire show and then cover both its accessibility and creative decisions as a Disabled journalist.
My job had already been made very difficult. Social-media posts I had commented on professionally were erased leading up to my attendance. I struggled for weeks to get Roundabout to ensure that my individual attendance would be safe. Even on the day I attended, its new ticketing system failed when I attempted to retrieve my ticket.
I also had to bring a notarized document recording that no fire-safety, egress or evacuation plan had been established for me as a non-ambulatory wheelchair user. Roundabout had never agreed to secure the paid view of patrons who cannot stand during the curtain call, either. Manager Zipporah signed that document after I arrived. She later told NYPD that she had not signed it. I have contemporaneous documentation of both her signature and her subsequent denial.
That is to say nothing of the subjective journalistic questions I had directly asked and that went unanswered about staging The Imaginary Invalid with cartoonish marketing using the outdated term “hypochondria” while Disabled people around the world struggle with medical skepticism, anti-Disabled legislation, hate crimes and social pressures. I intended to watch the production, consider what it actually put onstage and report honestly afterward.
I was absolutely not prepared for the way that I myself individually faced a terrifying, braying, ableist mob inside the Todd Haimes Theatre.
People called me names. They swore at me. They laughed. One man told me that I was “a horrible person” immediately after I cited the New York City Human Rights Law while raising access concerns already documented with the theatre. Audience members clapped, cheered and jeered at me. I heard and recorded on video words including “narcissist,” “crip,” “cripple,” “bitch,” “wheelie,” “lunatic,” “psycho” and “old bag.” They told me to get out because I was “ruining their show.”
As I recorded on video, staff and creative personnel permitted, and at points encouraged, individual and collective harassment directed at me. My use of a voice appropriate in volume to my hearing disabilities did not give staff the right to even attempt to remove me for raising disability-access concerns that the theatre had known about for a long time. When I specifically and repeatedly asked Todd Haimes Theatre personnel to identify any statute authorizing my removal, they identified none.
Mind you, this happened at a production where the whole entire point was to laugh at a man on the basis that his supposed disability was fake and that was apparently hilarious. The conflict at the Todd Haimes Theatre concerned whether my civil rights were properly enforced and whether enforcing them inconvenienced able-bodied people.
I do not know if it gets any more deeply, darkly, horrifically ironic.
The matter unfortunately concluded with NYPD involvement. I left the theatre of my own volition. Notably, I was not trespassed, and NYPD did not prohibit me from returning. I shook the hands of Officers Tariq and Cooper (who reassured me he would help me file the complaint I needed, even as people inside the auditorium were cheering and verbally abusing me). I documented what happened and filed a criminal complaint for harassment concerning the conduct of an actor onstage with the officers from the 14th Precinct. That’s how this matter ended, and on both a professional and a personal level, I regard that as a shame and an injustice.
I’m very grateful to the NYPD for their assistance helping me leave safely. When I phoned the 14th Precinct after arriving home to my family to discuss supplementing my formal complaint, I named the specific officers who assisted me and thanked their superior officer. I’ll be sure to do so again after giving more information and showing my contemporaneous documentation.
But it should not need to be like this. Disabled people should be able to attend the theatre like all other patrons, watch the show, enjoy it, know that emergency egress plans are in place for them in case of a fire, that they’ll be able to see the curtain call and encore just like everyone else without needing to fight for that, and certainly that they won’t face a mob alone in the theatre with staff against them if they dare cite their rights.
I went to the Todd Haimes Theatre as a ticketed patron prepared to do my job as a rights enforcements specialist and a journalist. I expected to assess a production about illness, medicine and disbelief. I was prepared to feel mildly uncomfortable about the subject material but was also hopeful that the talent of the cast, the beautiful sets and costumes, the lovely theatre, and the great interactions I’d had with patrons ahead of time would lead to an overall positive outcome.
Instead, I watched an audience turn disability prejudice and participatory entertainment and hostility against one very visibly Disabled woman before the performance could continue.
My experience today didn’t feel like Broadway. It felt like the Colosseum. I am not really sure I feel like going back to the Haimes any time soon.
All rights reserved. More coverage to come as appropriate.
Short Video About Today’s Events
UPDATE, 19:00 Eastern, September 27: Since I began publishing about what happened at the Todd Haimes Theatre, my social-media accounts have received a sudden influx of attacks from apparent troll accounts displaying characteristics including no previous posts, fewer than 150 followers and little or no identifiable history. The activity has included posting “Victim Card” GIFs beneath an unrelated recent post about service-dog policy, calling me “rude” for asserting disability rights at the Haimes, telling me “shame on you” and attempting to discredit my documented account of the incident.
I am not claiming that Roundabout, the production or any particular person or organization is directing or sending these accounts. I will continue monitoring my platforms, preserving the accounts and their activity before deleting the comments and blocking them, and recording any patterns involving timing, language, coordination or amplification. If the conduct escalates, becomes threatening, appears coordinated or supplies evidence of retaliation or unlawful harassment, I will submit the preserved material to the appropriate regulatory and law-enforcement authorities.
UPDATE SUNDAY SEPT 27 21:16 – I do want to note directly from the contemporaneous audiovisual recording taken during tonight’s performance of The Imaginary Invalid that when the same manager who had earlier referred to me, a human person, as “a wheelchair” over the radio to another staff member asked me to leave the auditorium after I raised an access concern, I asked, verbatim, “In what way was my voice inappropriate?” The manager responded, “It was much louder than it is now.” (Again, I have hearing loss from mastoiditis.) I then replied, verbatim, “Okay. Can you please describe in detail how it was inappropriate?” He then said, verbatim, “It was above the appropriate volume of… for… a live performance.” I replied, verbatim, “By your subjective assessment?” He said yes. I asked him if he would put this in writing. He said yes. I then asked him to please cite the relevant statute backing his request for me to leave the auditorium. His response was, verbatim, “No.” I replied, “Well, I can cite the statute [for myself]. Retaliation under the New York City Human Rights Law and Title III of the ADA. That’s what I’m citing, and I’m going to remain here.” Immediately after I invoked these disability-related rights, a woman who had approached my wheelchair asked this staff member to force me to leave, and he told her he would. This is not lawful behavior by the Todd Haimes Theatre.