True Tales by Disability Advocates
Where advocates harness the power of storytelling to build community with their peers and hope to develop empathy in others. A team of disability advocates creates this True Tales podcast to share personal stories by disabled storytellers and add their voices to the growing community of podcast listeners.
True Tales by Disability Advocates
Actual Lives: The Full Story
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For our Season 3 finale, we have a special episode detailing the founding of Actual Lives, the performance project that originally brought the stories you've heard this season to life. Terry Galloway tells us the full story through audio from our conversation in the previous episode and audio from an interview she had with Celia Hughes on the Art Spark Texas Radio Hour.
Guest Bio:
Deaf since nine, queer since forever, and Texan by cruel twist of fate, Terry Galloway is the author of "Mean Little deaf Queer", a memoir about growing up on the margins andmaking a ruckus there. In Austin, Texas she was known for co-founding Actual Lives, a performance project for adults with disabilities. Now in Tallahassee, Florida, she and Donna Marie Nudd, her wife and creative partner, run the 38 year-old community theater for the weird community, the Mickee Faust Club—a theatrical haven for locals of all stripes, including straights, queers, crips with attitude, Mennonites and men-in-tights. Galloway has toured the world with her three solo shows. Her op-eds, scholarly articles, poems and plays have been widely published and anthologized.
Check out the special 15th Anniversary edition of Terry's memoir "Mean Little deaf Queer" with a new Afterword, written after Galloway received the cochlear implants that allowed her the mixed miracle of being “cured,” on Amazon or its own website at https://www.meanlittledeafqueer.com/
For more details about our programs go to Art Spark Texas, True Tales Podcast Page.
Welcome to True Tales by Disability Advocates Podcast. Authentic voices of people thriving with disabilities, individuals use the art of storytelling to change the world.
John Beer:The True Tales by Disability Advocates Podcast is produced by Art Spark Texas' Speaking Advocates Program. The free virtual training is open to people of all disabilities no matter where you live.
Kamand Alaghehband:Keep listening to hear how life's challenges can spark the desire to speak out and advocate for yourself others.
Kurt Wilkinson:Hello! You're listening to the True Tales by Disability Podcast. Changing the world one story at a time. This is the show where advocates harness the power of storytelling to build community with their peers and develop empathy in others. Hello, everyone! I'm Kurt Wilkinson.
Jennifer McKinney:I'm Jennifer McKinney.
Adam Griebel:I'm Adam Griebel.
John Beer:I'm John Beer.
Kurt Wilkinson:And we are your hosts for season three! All throughout season three of this podcast, we have heard many wonderful stories that come from actual lives. But what was or is actual lives? Well, on our last episode, we were very lucky to have Terry Galloway on, who was one of the original co-founders of Actual Lives Austin. And on this season three finale, we have more from that wonderful conversation, alongside audio from an interview Celia had with Terry on the Art Spark radio hour. We will know the full story of how actual lives came be.
John Beer:Terry, can I ask you a couple uh questions about where the concept came from? Because I know it's you you co-founded it with Chris and uh Celia, but the concept was yours. Like it was your brainchild. So how'd you come up with actual lives?
Terry Galloway:I just found this out. My wife found this out, but I actually wrote a thing Heart of a Dog in the late, very early 1980s, and it turned around in Newark Essa, uh, who did uh uh Storm Warnings I don't know if you know him, he but I read him to it we uh well I I I met him, but uh Heart of a Dog and Out on Night and Lost My Shoes were among the very first disability performances. Um so I was in New York and um writing about disability. I met a really nice guy loved by him, Kenny Fries, he's the poet, and uh just you know did some met people. And later I was asked if I would tour with a thing Performance Space 122, PS 122. And I was uh going around with some people, it was like a little vaudeville show, and uh among them were the who later became Blue Man Group. They were called Blue Man Group there, but they were a traveling performance. And we all liked each other when we toured. So we were touring in uh we were touring in Europe and uh we were touring in the UK, and they had put me in charge of everybody had a workshop. So Blue Man Group was doing like a drumming workshop, uh I think Lloyd Carlos was there was I think Lloyd was in that one doing the voice, and they put me in of a disability workshop when we were in Manchester. And so I thought, oh, yikes, you know, what do I to do here? Because um, I thought I'm going to just use and read up and use some of these theater techniques that people for these kinds of workshops. So I'd go in there and there maybe 15 people and every kind of disability. I mean, there uh uh one of the guys had had a stroke, of the women had been, she had been a dancer, she'd clipped at the waist by a car. There were two down uh syndrome, uh brother and sister, uh, a guy with vision impairment. There were, it was just like a a number of people. And look, uh I may be deaf in my own particular way, you know, but I knew nothing about other disabilities. So how was I supposed to do this? And so I tried to do some of those things that I even I couldn't have done them, and tried to do these theater games, but they couldn't work because you're gonna do vocal things. Well, first I couldn't hear it, and then two, some people couldn't do it. And uh, are we gonna do these stretching exercises? Well, some people couldn't stretch. I'm here in Manchester, and I'm thinking, none of this is working. And I just thought, what the hell? And I said, Can we just talk? So we went around and we said like pretty much what we actually ended up doing later, many years later, in actual lives. Um what happened to you? And we started talking about our lives. And sometimes the most profound thing wasn't the disability you know, it was the art that people were trying to do. The woman who still wanted to be a dancer was very interested in wheelchair dancing, and it was just then beginning to, you know, to come to fore. But it was wonderful. You know, it was wonderful. So we we got to talk, and then we got to talk about what we wanted to perform and it and the stories, the stories were so compelling, you know. And so I went away from the workshop thinking, oh hell, you know, I just blew it. But years later I thought, no, I just didn't know how take advantage of a of an amazing situation. I mean stoned. So later I was asked to teach at Cal the California of the Arts. And so I tried to do something like an actual lives there and it was it was okay. And then I was invited to go to the University of Texas also as a guest artist, and I started a uh uh this class was called Our Actual Lives. And I thought we were gonna talk, you know, candidly about disabilities, and I thought, oh wow, all of these students with disabilities, they're gonna sign up for this class you know. Yay. Um no. One one kid with a disability, and that was a woman, a young woman, who had at the time it was called uh, well, it still is, I think maybe multiple personality disorder, but they're different ways of speaking with, and did the funniest last her project was at this time were uh cassette recorders. So she took about three or four cassette recorders, recorded all of her different personalities, strapped them to her body, and turned them all on. I couldn't hear it, but I knew it was brilliant. It was just brilliant. So Chris Strickling happened to be in that class, and so she said, you know, we should do this outside of the university. You know, this should be so she knew uh Celia Hughes so she and Celia said, This has got to be done. So they invited me and we kept the title, Actual Lives.
Celia Hughes:So we uh Terry and I met um 25 years ago.
Terry Galloway:Something like that.
Celia Hughes:Yeah, in 2000, we did the first Austin, the actual lives Austin.
Terry Galloway:Was that really yeah?
Celia Hughes:It was in 2000. And uh, you know, just a few years ago, we were you know, we were children. We were mere children.
Terry Galloway:But I uh I want to make something clear. I'd already been been doing something like actual here in Tallahassee with the Mickee Faust Club. So hence that's why we started calling it Actual Lives Austin, you know, our actual lives wherever else we doing it, but actual lives Tallahassee.
Kurt Wilkinson:So Actual Lives has always kind of been multiple places at the same time.
Terry Galloway:Yes. And so Actual Lives Austin um was was specifically exclusively, exclusively for people with disabilities. And and here it was uh it was mixed because we had what we call Crips with Attitude. And we and said, uh, we don't want to be in some special thing because special has all of that, you know, We want to just do it. And we're and Mickee Faust is a community theater for the weird community. And so there were already a bunch of weird people in it and we had already, as early as 1987, we had already ramping our shows and we had even captioning our shows and doing that. So I'd already had some of that with Mickee Faust. Um, so that's that's kind of the origin of actual lives. And then they got some money, they brought me in, and started. And Terri Dauber was the first person that I met from the actual lives. She was with Celia at the um in her office, and I came in for the first day, and we were gonna talk about And Terri said to me, Um uh, she was telling uh Celia a story about her power chair going to Cleveland without her, and she was kind of uh crying and a little crying and upset about it. But when she was telling the story, it was so absurd that. I started to laugh because it was so nuts, and then we all started to laugh. And and I was thinking that's a good thing because how we we get our power back.
Celia Hughes:And yeah, and it the way that the way that that story played out through the show that we did was that Ki- Terri told the story, but she told it in sections throughout the night. So that whenever she came back out on the stage, she was telling, and then but because if she had just told us, you know, it would have been, oh, you know, everybody would blade.
Terry Galloway:You had to you had to theatricalize it.
Celia Hughes:Exactly.
Terry Galloway:And that's what we're we're telling people. I mean that their stories could be so easily theatricalized.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:I I remember it was Meg or somebody who said, I don't I don't want people looking at me on stage because staring and gaping at me at all. And that's when we're saying, but you get to stare back. You're staring back, you're controlling, you're controlling the gaze, Meg. And that's why Meg came out.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:And then we would also say, Well, what are things like who was the woman with the vision impairment who sang so beautifully?
Celia Hughes:Diane.
Terry Galloway:Yes, and I remember that she made her way when we were doing this and we were doing this at the va-
Celia Hughes:Vortex.
Terry Galloway:Was it?
Celia Hughes:The Vortex.
Terry Galloway:Yeah, Vortex, I love Vortex, they're wonderful, and the best pastas. It's a wonderful thing. And they did the dog, the mutt Christmas, and I love them. Um but that that was the first place that we did it.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:And it was wonderful because people were not just telling their stories, they were presenting them theatrically, using their bodies in ways that you would just you just say, do it.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:That was the best audience, it was the most wonderful audience. They loved it.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:I I remember her, uh, Diane making her way perfectly the center of the stage because it was it was filled other people.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:And she did, it's a Barbara Streisand song, but it's not it's I wanna, I wanna know what life is for.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:I don't want much, I just want more.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:Something little and I will sing. Ask me of something, and I will sing.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:Everything. And it was wonderful!
Celia Hughes:Right right.
Terry Galloway:Wonderful! And that was who is the woman that Chris was working so long?
Celia Hughes:Joyce.
Terry Galloway:Who?
Celia Hughes:With the, with, Joyce.
Terry Galloway:Joyce! Who she lifted her finger and flipped em the bird
Celia Hughes:She couldn't really, but didn't somebody have to come and help her? She was telling the story about being at work and how was being so maligned at work. And so somebody had to come out and help her because she couldn't actually lift helping the bird.
Terry Galloway:But also, people were talking very frankly about the that that people with disabilities are infantilized. They're not supposed to have a sex life. Well, of course, people they're of course they do.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:Of course we do. And and so um people were talking very frankly, and Joyce was talking about her sex life, other people were about their sex lives, and that was shocking, you know shocking.
Celia Hughes:Well, and you think 25 years ago, I mean, so it was it was something that no one was doing at that time, is putting people on the stage that everybody wanted to look at, you know. Uh, but saying, Yeah, here I am, and I'm looking at you, looking at me, looking at you.
Terry Galloway:It was wonderful.
Celia Hughes:Yeah.
Terry Galloway:I've I've never forgotten that that particular show it was encapsulated so much of what I love.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:That's always what I had wanted actual lives to be.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:You know, that's what I was trying to do in these university environments, but you can't because it's it's kids who can afford to go to college. A lot of people with disabilities can't be there, you or are they not interested in theater, or you know, know, there are all of these things. And I remember it was it was hard. We were really trying to say to people, look back, look back.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:You know, stare back.
Kurt Wilkinson:Uh Terry, I believe you have a book, deaf Little uh deaf Queer out.
Terry Galloway:"Mean Little deaf Queer" Yes it is. The 15th anniversary. Make sure you get the 15th anniversary edition. Also, oh, I gotta tell them this. Um when the book first came out, uh, I really, really wanted to do the audio book, but nah, because of my uh uh lateral lisp thing.
Rebecca Metcaffe:They wouldn't let her.
Terry Galloway:Yeah, yeah, yeah. They wouldn't let me do it. And so um for this 15th uh edition, I got cochlear implants correct? And the first thing that that uh changed was my speech. Because before my brain hadn't known what I because I I I I I you the mechanism of speech is is uh is complex. And so my brain didn't know what I wasn't doing, and all of a sudden my brain knew, and so my brain went whoops and fixed it. And so I got to do uh the audio version, but we talked and we said they really missed an opportunity because if they wanted to understand what it meant to be a mean little deaf queer, they would have let me read it, and then would have even at the end of information right there, and it would have been a kick.
Kurt Wilkinson:Well, I'm so glad you were able to do that audiobook.
Terry Galloway:I was profoundly deaf since the time I was nine my mother was given an antibiotic when she was pregnant with me to save her life and lie, and that's what happened. And I had a series of blood disorders and all of these kinds of things, and it also left me with a progressive deafness. So by the time I was nine, I was profoundly deaf. Um, well, but just like Rand, I I fought. You know, we were both we both fought in different but fought. And I want to tell you, it was it was hard for me because I sometimes had to barrel through and be I was sometimes a jackass because no, no, really, I've been such a jackass because I couldn't hear. And sometimes when I couldn't hear it, I would bull through it anyway, just because, you know, I didn't want anybody knowing I couldn't, you know, you know, that kind of thing. So I did that sometimes. And so I was really appreciative that Chris and Celia there, and then my wife Donna later joined us because acted then as my interpreter. So I could myself hear these stories. So that's that's where it came from. It came from well, you know what? It came from the joy of that terrible, terrible workshop. It could have just been a fucking disaster. And yet it was so much fun because I'm a nosy parker. I want to know why are you limpy, you know, why you know, know, why is that thing coming out of your side? You know, I'm just a fucking nosy parker. And but also because I felt a kinship because there were all these stories. It's just that's why I love Rand. And why even though uh there are some people with disabilities that I just want to pound into the ground, you know, they're just you know, really there's also a kinship often you know, a kinship, and one of those things is is that um I'll tell you the story because this is one that's part of my history, is that when I was in high school, I worked so fucking hard to be understandable and not to have the lateral lisp, but it was so common and it great. And I I I did the work. I won a I well, I won a little scholarship, but I went in to my high school guidance counselor, and all of my friends have been going in there, and they've been to go to Yale and go, you know, go to this conservatory and he handed me a mimeographed paper that said, errors and all factory work, make good job for deaf. And you walk out of there thinking, you can walk out of there thinking, oh yes, yes, or you think screw you and thank God, thank God, I thought screw you. You know, you too screw you, you little Sunday school prick shits.
Kurt Wilkinson:That's that's the reality of this society that uh only expects a certain type of person, uh, looking at people like us. And uh that kinship when even just two people with disabilities come together with a plan and an artistic vision, uh it's extremely powerful. So I'm so glad that you were able to create something has really moved a lot of people nationally uh from that singular class where there was only one other student. It was just you and that student. And you made great stuff then and it inspired you to great stuff into the future.
Terry Galloway:Well, you're a sweetheart for saying it. Thank you. You know, but I I truly do love it. I think it's so interesting. This whole thing about storytelling, because it's uh also democra democratic. It's the great, the great uh, you know, the oil it oils the democracy. You know, you know, we we need to be, you know, that is a democracy. You know, everybody ever if uh no one matters, then why should uh why does anyone matter?
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah. We're taking out a lot of those hierarchies.
Rebecca Metcaffe:All this being said though, people with disabilities can be assholes, too
Terry Galloway:Oh yes.
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah.
Rand Metcaffe:Yeah.
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah, when you were saying, you know, there's some with disabilities you want to punch in the ground, yeah, I feel that just because you know that's true of a lot of humans, you know. Uh we as disability people with disabilities, we're not a monolith whatsoever. There's all different types of personalities of that you can think of. There's also those uh personalities, but with disabilities.
Terry Galloway:Do you know that? So I um the other thing too I want to say is that um a lot of people who are big D deaf uh do not agree with being part of a disability community. And that was always, you know, that's always been that um that tension there. But I did because I went to a Lions camp for crippled when I was a kid, and I was the only deaf kid there all these kids with different disabilities. And that solidified my kinship with those kids because uh I was a I was afraid of the big D deaf community my parents wanted me to be oral. And yeah, and so I couldn't sign, and I desperately to be loved by that community because there was so much that I identified with. But and and later I did. I I when I would do my show, I did a show called Out All Night and Lost My Shoes, in which I talk about, you um deafness and different things, and and was able to talk to other big D deaf, big D deaf, little D deaf uh uh uh people about it, you know, about this the supposed division. And I don't it we don't need it, you know, we don't that division. Yeah, it's not needed.
Rebecca Metcaffe:Can you explain to me the difference between big D deaf and little D deaf?
Terry Galloway:Sure. Big D deaf is usually people who are uh who sign, people who come from deaf or deaf families, both their parents are deaf. There's a hierarchy there. Um, but uh uh sign is their major language. Uh they belong to the deaf deaf communities can be tight-knit, very and that's something I indeed. Yeah.
Kurt Wilkinson:Their own schools, their own neighborhoods.
Terry Galloway:Yes, the school of the deaf. Actually, when I was performing in Austin, I was a show called You Are My Sunshine, which was about the cochlear implants. And there were a number of students and professors the Texas School for the Deaf. And we talked about that because uh a lot of people in the deaf are number. fewer people are uh uh have called cochlear or getting cochlear implants a kind of a genocide, a form of And so there's a great debate about that. You know that and I find it really interesting. And I find, you know, I I find that quite the quite an interesting discussion. And it's still ongoing. And it's still ongoing.
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah. They there's the disability community and there's lots of what I would consider disability subcommunities. But as you've said some people are uh very it's very personal to them. And so uh especially if uh you don't consider uh what you have some sort of disability you can very much say like oh this is not a disability group this is its own separate group and then of course with the big D little D deaf you got that community that is very strong over a very long period of time uh there are similar things with uh the autism community how that is a very large and very vocal uh subcommunity uh and there are uh lots of disabilities to where uh some people will very adamantly say that they have is not a disability and that uh they're kind of going on their own for it or they have their own specific uh community that is just for their diagnosis. Uh it's a lot of culture and it's a lot of discussion. Uh I think it's a lot of good discussion. Uh and I think as long as we are uh very careful about what people in particular want as individuals and uh be respectful to that and also uh seeing the change in cultures around us and us being able to adapt to that uh I that's really good. So uh and you've done I think a very good job of adapting even in decades past where a lot of that stuff was not talked about and there's not hard and fast rules. And there's not always the right answer because different ways of thinking about inclusion where got actual lives Austin which is just for the disabled community and then you've got uh your actual lives there in Florida where you're saying that uh inclusion includes people without disabilities and those are good points all around.
Terry Galloway:Yeah and I would teach these when I I toured a lot I a number of I've toured for years actually uh a both my shows and then also when I was uh when my book came out I toured and uh to talk with people and it was just interesting because it's something that it's not just uh disability communities that the different communities everybody wants to talk about their stories. I think there's a lot of us who feel a lot of people feel uh of course we know this who feel completely unheard and you know and their lives can be just as hard you know different ways and so it's all it's been really quite interesting to me you know to go around to different group different kinds of people different groups of people what what are the community groups in different places um but I I gotta tell you I love it you know I love to hear these stories uh uh it's just it's uh it's just I love it yeah.
Kurt Wilkinson:I I love hearing stories from people with disabilities I love hanging out with people with disabilities, you know, when you do so very often uh a lot of able bodied people can feel a bit boring because they don't have fun stories like Rand's stories or Terry's stories.
Rebecca Metcaffe:I think it's just how you look at it I mean you can at your your story as really depressing or you can make well you can find the humor in it
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah you know hey you're alive at the end of it you know that doesn't sound depressing to me.
Terry Galloway:I really really love that!
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah and there is disabled joy as well.
Terry Galloway:boring as hell
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah well, you we can have we can have the disabled joy of of knowing that we're not boring and we're very interesting people there's uh the disabled joy of uh getting technology that helps us in the world so with your cochlear implants and I just recently got a new wheelchair after working on that for many many years uh and it's extremely exciting for me uh and so I I personally love technological
Terry Galloway:meeting
Kurt Wilkinson:advancements helping our disabilities and I think it's very important to know that that does not rate erase all who we are as people as disabled people uh you are still a deaf person even though you have those cochlear implants just like how I am a wheelchair user I still cannot walk I have osteogenesis imperfecta I still got those fragile bones even with my very cool electric wheelchair.
Terry Galloway:Well you know what Rand and I have been talking about that about for forgetting you know uh and and uh and about technology you know in fact um I I was asked to uh do uh a a 15th anniversary uh preface to my book "Mean Little deaf Queer" and so I did but I wanted uh Rand to be uh Rand and I talked and one of the things we talked about is that you once you're "cured" you know um you can so easily forget uh that you ever had a disability and so all of those things that were important and occupied you you know about they could just go because you're just living your life you know and so but we talked about that and and the importance of not forgetting and one of the things I'm so happy about that I really really liked is that when Rand and I would have these kind of discussions and and and uh um this old weasel would
Rebecca Metcaffe:She's talking about me.
Terry Galloway:No, Rebecca would help it translate and we would all get in these conversations um that some people are not going to be able to be cured and so they're not gonna be to be cured and so Rand and I talked about that and I'm saying okay I will never forget this and it's not just my determination not to it's because Rand is my neighbor and Rand is my friend and there's no easy fix here for the body you know there's that and so we are reminded of what look at the profundity of Rand's language and and where this comes from.
Celia Hughes:I want to get back to what you said about I I I don't want to forget because it's easy to forget. So and you had mentioned that in terms of Rand that says I you know that you put him at the end of the of the I guess the book you know I don't want to forget so what are you what are you afraid of forgetting what is it what is it that that you're going to forget like you said you're gonna forget what it was like before the implants what your life was?
Terry Galloway:Yes. No.
Celia Hughes:Yeah I want to understand that a little bit.
Terry Galloway:Okay um I've thought about this a lot and I do this show called uh You are my sunshine and I talk about it somewhat in there because um when I was first doing this I was ha ha I'm not deaf anymore I'm such a different person I don't have to be that I don't have to believe these things ha ha I'm free I'm free and then I was thinking what a monster because uh if I forget that I'm forgetting every bit of my compassion because I don't think I'm a naturally compassionate person I think I had to be pushed into it. I had to learn how it felt not to be able to and uh or learn how it felt when somebody called when my wife Donna and I were first seeing each other there was a a filmaker from the UK and I was having trouble hearing her she talking in a bar and I was having trouble hearing her and I had to ask her to repeat something and she turned to Donna and said "Is she a moron?"
Celia Hughes:Ooh
Terry Galloway:Ooh
Celia Hughes:I hope Donna said "No, but you are."
Terry Galloway:Something like that, but there but you get these things all along that let people know who they think you are so here's the thing I don't want to forget what I went through I don't want to forget what my friends go through you know I don't want to forget that it used to be really hard and that I was a different person. I I was angry and I was afraid of people I was really afraid of people and and I could be again just not the good the person I wanted to be and I forget what made those things okay I I I I don't want to forget that people taunted me I don't want to forget that people made fun of me. And I have what is essentially in some ways an an invisible disability and I don't want to forget what I saw at Lion's camp and how those kids even in that camp we were divided into the shallow end of the pool and the deep end of the pool the kids in the deep end of the pool we could swim that that that pool and the kids in the shallow end as Laura remembers they were the floaters and and it took every bit of energy for them to turn their heads and blow bubbles across the water as it did any Olympic champion jumping off a diving board into a perfect dive all that energy and I don't want to forget it. And and it's so easy because you can become so enamored with this sense that you missed you know I didn't realize how paranoid it made me not to hear how afraid how prickly how you know I what a chip I had because I was constantly trying to prove to people that I wasn't a moron you know I know what you really think and those kinds of things. So Rand and I talk about this because he has CP and there's no cure you know no "cure" so when we talk about this we talk about what he went through what he still goes through what people still he was out when he moved to Florida he moved to Florida to uh be a Mickee Faust and he gambled and he's a good gambler and he said they can't see my tell because they have cerebral palsy and they're afraid to stare at me so he made a ton load of money he paid for his house with a down payment from his gambling proceeds but you can't couldn't gamble in Florida so he went to Georgia he got lost it's like midnight he's close to Halloween he sees this Exxon sign. He drives up there there's this little Georgia boy in his truck with his you know gimmicap on backwards you know something he gets up and he says you know how he can't excuse me and the guy turns around and he flattens against his car because he reeks of marijuana this guy who's in the little the the Georgia guy and he knows nobody's seen and he's probably never seen somebody with palsy and Rand knows this he knows the drill he says I know I look on this but I'm lost this anything this is just a losing proposition I'm gonna eat your dad so he does this of that time he does it all of the time Rand is so good at it so we talk about this we cried about this and I wanted I will never forget because and and as I say in this because all I have to do to remember is I go across the street and I talk with Rand. I think it's extraordinarily important not to forget because one of the things I do see is all of those people the slick ones and the women with their snake like faces and you know you know that you know that kind and their know the Mar-a-Lago people is that they forget everything except their own personal lavishness or something.
Kurt Wilkinson:Yeah, and you get to the point where there's uh uh relatives of the president coming up to the president and then like other relatives are talking to him and then our president is just like wouldn't it be better if we just got rid of those kinds of people it's scary it's really scary when you have these people in power who just do not interact with people in the disability community even in their own families enough. In both of our conversations Celia and I were able to hear about what Terry learned from Mickee Faust to help found actual lives and how Mickee Faust is doing today. Let's listen.
Terry Galloway:This started over four almost 40 years ago over a bucket of margaritas so
Kurt Wilkinson:Very nice.
Terry Galloway:And I plan gigantic cigar smoking foul you know foul mouthed giant rodent you know who is like supposed to be the illegitimate brother of that uncuous rodent in Orlando so just so you guys know where it comes from it's very rat centered and you know and scurry scurry scurry. This was actually before actual lives and actually I was teaching and before I had um a tour.
Celia Hughes:Okay.
Terry Galloway:I've been touring so when we got there we started Mickee Faust and actually my my awareness but not my complete awareness about disability in theater arose from Faust. This was back in 1987.
Celia Hughes:Wow okay I did not know that.
Terry Galloway:And also my awareness of of trans and uh um uh trans issues came from that as well um oh there was a woman okay we were in we were a ragtag little group, but
Celia Hughes:Aren't you still?
Terry Galloway:Uh yeah always groups like ours never ragtag always ragtag but uh there was a woman named Marianne Ward and she uh uh one of those big 10-ton power chairs and she loved Faust but the place we were playing we didn't own it it didn't have a ramp even though the guy's sister was paralyzed from the waist down and couldn't get get in here so built a ramp and then she wanted to be she said I to perform so we said well why didn't you perform us so she was the first person I'd ever performed with but I thought this was the exceptional case right you this kind of it's kind of like that so we built a ramp up to the stage and she performed with us and we loved her she was absolutely wonderful and she was a social worker and she taught at FSU and she uh got the ADA to make build a ramp to that bar itself. We built the ramp to the stage she got the law on him so he built the ramp a winding ramp to that space and then we moved into our own space.
Celia Hughes:But the ramp was, you know.
Terry Galloway:But that was the first my first real thing and then I touring and then then I was going out and doing all this and so there was in there it was in there it just was but it's like you think this is the exception in a way because she was and I was and and there are actually some autistic people in the company people on the spectrum but we didn't know that you know it was just this like odd behavior it was like okay it's all okay.
Celia Hughes:It was theatre.
Terry Galloway:Yeah yeah we had trans people in the company and we and uh we learned some lessons in that because uh there were two trans women and um um they uh we didn't know because we uh we had that there were men transitioned into women or men dressing as uh women it was it was uh iffy the things iffy then but what happened was that we put them in the men's dressing room and they were so hurt and we're going oh my god have we done?
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:You know we didn't mean to do this we just didn't know and so we said no more dressing rooms like that everybody gets dressed however you want we're not gonna do this thing.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:You know so if you're shy and you
Celia Hughes:But we were learning back then I mean it's again it's a
Terry Galloway:That was 1987.
Celia Hughes:Exactly so it's ever
Terry Galloway:But we did learn.
Celia Hughes:Yeah, you know.
Terry Galloway:We did learn there are a lot of trans youth in in Faust now uh Mickee Faust uh we we spent a while at the warehouse and then we got this space in a place called Railroad Square we were there for 28 years.
Celia Hughes:That's amazing.
Terry Galloway:Uh yeah uh the original owner was this wonderful woman named Nan Boyton I loved her and everyone did um a tornado came along and ripped our ripped this the top off the space and then when we were arguing for the city to put some money into this uh the new owner the son of the elderman uh rented it out to other people while even as we were arguing on behalf of the Zockberg it was like after 28 years it was like what? So uh we've been kind of homeless but we have found a interesting place. It's called the House of Music Tallahassee. It's an all blues bar. When we first came in there there was no ramp to the and we're going oh we can't we just can't so we built one and it it's perfect perfect it's captioned. We audio description is one of the hardest things for us to do and um because you have to know what that you're doing.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:I know you have and you have to have the equipment and we are a very poor theater and so we we have people sitting there doing the captioning.
Celia Hughes:Right.
Terry Galloway:You know and but we've been doing that since 1987 or something like that. We've been we've made it accessible when we didn't money we made it more accessible than Broadway was being accessible. We would do we did and we had lots of people with vision impairment we would make that we would uh uh record the scripts we would big you know the 16 print you know different kinds of things so we we did that and we're trying to learn more for this new space so
Rebecca Metcaffe:I love Mickee Faust it's like a family and Mickee Faust is a community theater in that anybody can open audition anybody who wants to participate there's an is in it's great um and also anybody who feels othered can or not can be a part of it. And so there's a lot of people with disabilities lots of uh LGBT focused it's just it's such a diverse group of people and I love it.
Terry Galloway:The kind of theater that we that people are trying to to do in things like actual lives or Mickee Faust for matter is that we are trying not to make it be um we're trying to get to the roots of what theater always was and it's not a vanity project. It's a pro it's a dialogue with ourselves about ourselves. And we're so that's one of the things that's different is because you don't you sometimes when you want to be vain and you want to be silly and you want these things but the major thing is that you want that connection the audience and the performer and and what and the words you're saying. And that because all of those things those dramatic instances in theater they come from life you know and that's what we're trying to get back to in a way that just exactly what Rand said um you you don't want to have stage fright and you shouldn't have stage fright because you're talking to people about something they want to hear even if they don't know they want to hear it. They want to, you know. One of our people her name is Jessamine and she uses a chair and um uh um she uh I believe she has MS and she uh she wrote a piece about about pest exterminators and we were the pests and um yeah that was that was very cool but then a guy named Robert who uh he's a great he wrote another one about hiding hiding uh from you know from people who mean us harm we we there's so much that disability is we're the canary in a minefield you know we really are because with you because because nothing sexy about us they're trying it's unforgivable it's unforgivable of us to fight for our right to live and be you know it's uh so uh yeah yeah yeah so anyway I'm really glad you're doing this podcast you know
Kurt Wilkinson:I am too. I'm glad that uh Celia was able to get this podcast together in a way to continue the speaking advocates program uh uh I'm very thankful to Mrs Boye for helping start this podcast and I'm trying my best to uh continue it in her stead.
Terry Galloway:Yes and thank you thank you for that thank you.
Kurt Wilkinson:Everybody listening if you want more wonderful stories from Terry Galloway uh go ahead and look at "Mean Little deaf Queer" on Amazon or on its own website and make sure you get that 15th anniversary edition so that you can hear Terry's wonderful voice telling her story. Thank you so much for joining us.
Terry Galloway:Goodbye.
Rebecca Metcaffe:Goodbye.
Rand Metcaffe:Bye!
Terry Galloway:Goodbye.
John Beer:Thank you all.
Kurt Wilkinson:Buh Bye! Thank you for listening to the third season of the True Tales by Disability Advocates podcast. If you enjoyed this episode oh please share it with your friends and talk about us on social media. If you'd like to let us know what you think of the podcast consider leaving us a review on social media or on your favorite podcast platform. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Goodbye everybody and have a wonderful day!
Kamand Alaghehband:All episodes of the True Tales by Disability Advocates podcast are free on Apple Podcasts. Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts.
John Beer:Funding for the True Tales Podcast is supported by G TOPS, the City of Austin grants for technology opportunities, and by a generous grant from the FS Foundation. Lighting paths. firing ideas. sparking creations.
Kristen Gooch:To learn more about the speaking advocates program sign up for our newsletter at artsparktx.org that's A R T S P A R K T X dot O R G.
