♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate their
time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, Artsably is in conversation with Lisa Sniderman, a musical theater
playwright, a songwriter, a ukulele player, and a vocalist,
known by her artist's name, Aoede, living in California.
You can find the resources mentioned by Lisa Sniderman during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
♪ Rhythmic music ♪
♪ Sounds of people connecting on Zoom ♪
Hey, everybody. Check this out.
What makes a live theater experience?
I'm driven to find ways to take the spectacle of live theater,
the visuals, the audio, and especially the feel of being
in community with a live audience, and to create comparable, immersive,
engaging experiences for a virtual audience.
I'm Lisa Sniderman.
I'm the playwright and co-composer for The Grieving Project.
For 16 years, I've lived with rare chronic illness, and I
kept so busy creating I realized I had forgotten to grieve my illness.
And I've also been home for years, missing and unable to attend live theater.
And I had this vision of bringing live theater experience
to those like me in community with others through hybrid stage performances,
which sparked The Grieving Project.
My name is Suzanne Richard, the theatrical director of The Grieving Project.
I wanted people to be able to go to the theater, and if they couldn't
go to the theater, to be there watching a show in community with others.
My name is Jessica Wallach, and I am the Accessibility Director
of The Grieving Project.
We want people to have multiple access points to experience this show.
My name is Chistopher Morrison.
I'm the Digital Experience Director for the Grieving Project.
In order to bring in the show into the metaverse space, we brought in a
three-camera team and a live stream team.
Inside that metaverse space, there are three hanging screens
over our digital twin of the theater.
We So I had a digital twin of the lobby of the theater where our digital audience
could meet in avatar form, talk with each other, obviously get some instructions
about how the space would work.
Hi, my name is Enoch Chan.
I am video director, a live video director on Grieving Project.
It very much became about really allowing for the audience to choose
whatever moment they want to see, just like they're actually in in light play.
♪ Ambient music ♪
I was independent, and I was strong.
I had passions and songs and was free to follow dreams.
I didn't even give it thought.
One word that encapsulates how this made you feel or what it made you think.
Cool, curious, engaging, interesting, introspective, challenging.
For those of us who can't go see big shows like Water for Elephants
and The Outsiders in Hell's Kitchen, it's important that we, too, have
engaging, immersive theater experiences beyond Broadway on demand.
And this proof of concept is only the beginning.
[End of the presentation.]
Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, I am with Lisa Sniderman, who is a musical theater playwright,
a songwriter, a ukulily player, and a vocalist known by her artist's name, A.
Aoede, living in California. Welcome, Lisa.
Thank you. It's so great to be here.
Thank you for being with us today.
It's great to talk with you.
I know you have a lot of projects going on, a lot of
talents that you developed over the year.
I am very interested in knowing a little bit more about you.
As a first question, can you talk about your background, your story,
Yes. I'm Lis.
I go by she/her, and I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
Okay, thank you.
How did it start all that?
How did you come to music and arts?
Well, I have been living with a rare chronic illness for 16
and a half years, two actually.
Dermatomyositis, which is a progressive muscle weakness disease that affects my muscles,
skin, stamina, energy, and something called common variable immune deficiency.
That impacts my immune system and that means I make few antibodies.
I've been homebound even before the pandemic due to compromised immunity.
Let's take us back, as you said, years before all of this happened, so that you
get a sense of that's where I am now.
This is where I started.
I started making music in a about 2006 under my artist persona, Aoede.
I chose this name because she was the muse of song in Greek mythology.
I actually wanted to be affiliated with inspiration, just
to remind myself to be inspired and to continually inspire others.
Actually in - I focused on albums and folk pop rock,
initially, in a singer-songwriter genre.
Then in 2010, I actually had a big health flare.
I was diagnosed in '08 with the first of my muscle diseases.
In '10, I had a big flare that hospitalized me.
I was unable to use my muscles, and so I had to relearn how to do everything,
basic functions, sit, play, stand, and relearn my instruments.
That was a big transition in my life.
I shifted my focus in 2012 to musical
theater, knowing that it was not really
in the cards for me anymore to be doing my singer-songwriter dream.
I wasn't going to be able to tour. I couldn't do live performances.
So I had to shift and figure out, how do I keep my dreams alive?
And so at that point, I started creating young adult
fantasy musicals as audiobooks.
And I blended character voices and narration and full musical scores.
So think of a radio play. I started putting those out in 2012.
At the time, I had released, I think, well, actually, over time, I've released
about 10 albums, including three of these fantasy musical audiobooks
that I had put onto - that I'd recorded.
And then I adapted some of those to stage plays.
So basically, I had this health setback that prevented me
from fully staging my work.
And that was a big thing because I was really getting the musical theater
bug, but I wasn't able to move forward.
So the main thing is I created art, and I realized this only recently,
to escape from my illness.
And then I started making music and theater to help others
struggling with chronic illness thrive.
I started integrating my illness into my art, and I discovered that
music and art are my lifelines, and I just can't stop creating.
I think when COVID hit, it opened this possibility of connecting everywhere
in the world that then became the normal.
Did it influence your thoughts?
Okay, Let's continue that and open it to the world.
There is no reason why we couldn't make it
part of this project where everybody
could connect from everywhere.
Yeah.
In my world, that leads to what I'm doing artistically
or what I ended up doing is because...
So I had spent so much time basically creating that I realized I hadn't grieved
my illness for all of these years.
I just sort of - and a lot of us do this.
We put ourselves directly into our work and we just keep going.
Sometimes it's a society thing that tells us, be strong.
Don't let your outside show what's going on on the inside.
And so I never really grieved, and that was a big thing.
So it sparked me to create this project that I can talk about.
But when you talk about COVID, it all happened during the pandemic.
So it was a time where not only was I looking at like, Oh, all of these things
that I may not have grieved with my illness and changed identity,
but here we have a pandemic.
So now we have loss on top of it that we were all feeling
that was also brought to that project, including how it was created.
Just the fact that we had to be in different places.
I couldn't be physically at the studio.
My health doesn't allow that.
So my producer was at the studio.
So the pandemic helped shape the projects that I did during those years, for sure.
I think it also opened so much possibilities to other artists just
to imagine, Okay, I'm an artist creating from my bed, but now I can create from
a theater with a computer, with someone helping me put a computer there.
I saw so many artists having new ideas and also gaining confidence
on the fact that there was a new possibility that was opening.
Absolutely.
For some of us living with illness and disabilities, that wasn't new.
I'm not saying the ability to connect with theater.
You'll see that the project I'm talking about is exactly that,
bringing live theater experience to people who can't attend like me.
However, but first, even Zoom, that was something for some people.
I'd been on Zoom for years.
That had been my main way of connecting.
And I gave workshops on things that I was doing to chronic illness communities.
So I was already in that realm.
In other words, the isolation factor wasn't as big for me for the pandemic
as it was for some because I had already been operating that way.
And a lot of I had talked to who had been living with illness and not so much
out in the world were guidance to other people when it happened because
we've been there, we've been isolated.
Yeah. It reminds me of the talks we can have
in disability studies and critical disability studies,
where really the medical model of disability, framing everything around
whatever a condition is, blocks the humanity
and the social parts of the person.
Absolutely.
I always feel this. I am not my disease.
I have a disease, and it does shape part of my identity, as does disability.
I understand that about myself, but I am first and foremost an artist.
I am not saying, Hey, I am Dermatomyositis.
That is not me.
That's exactly what I mean by, I think we're on the same page about that,
that I'm not the medical model either.
Speaking of medical model, you did a very interesting project.
It's a video where you explain your experience in this progression of
the disease, and it's an animated video.
Can you talk about this project?
Keep Shining, if that's the one you're talking about.
Yeah.
This was spark for the project that I'm going to be telling you about
called The Grieving Project.
The reason that it is such a spark for me is I think, as I was saying,
I denied or I avoided really thinking about what happened to me back
when I was in the hospital. Well, that happened in 2010.
It was 2019 when I was creating Keep Shining.
And I had interviewed a whole bunch of people for a project
called Lights in the Darkness.
I thought, like I had written a book.
I wanted to share my memoir.
It's called A Light in the Darkness: Transcending Chronic Illness
Through the Power of Art and Attitude.
And when I thought to myself, what's the best way that I want
to share this with the world.
It was in collaboration with other artists.
I looked all over the world to find people who are also creating to heal
and did this Lights in the Darkness.
I created a song that was based on all of our experiences called Keep Shining.
It wasn't until I created the video for it that I realized this is my story.
As it was unfolding that, Oh, my gosh, the storyboard is the hospital.
Oh, my gosh, the storyboard is recovery, et cetera.
That that was the first symbol to me.
I hadn't grieved my illness.
A nurse, when I was getting infusions at the time, saw this video and said,
your video can help others access their feelings in a way that words alone can't.
And that sparked me to create The Grieving Project
as a spoken word musical audiobook.
So can you talk about this project, The Grieving Project?
Absolutely.
So not only did I describe that I've been home due to health, but I've also
been able to not attend live theater.
And I envision bringing the spectacle of live theater to others.
And whether that's the audio, the visuals, the feeling of being in community
with others, all of that sparked this vision to adapt an audiobook
that I created during the pandemic to a hybrid stage musical.
I don't want to spend a ton of time on the audiobook, but I'll just say
during the pandemic, that was my source and inspiration was like, I basically
put together 14 tracks, and they all revolved around grieving and thriving.
So seven related to the stages of grief and seven related to these stages
that I created of thriving because I didn't want to stop at acceptance.
That doesn't go far enough in my eyes.
So anyways, I created this.
I've started adapting it.
And my dream is to stage this, but I can't physically be part of it.
We ask ourselves, What do you do if you can't realize your dream in person?
This was what came to me about this idea of the Grieving Project.
When I started adapting it, this goal is to reimagine theater
and bring experiences to people who can't attend live shows.
We did this with a hybrid disability center musical
that blends live and virtual theater.
Basically, think about If I describe what we did as a proof of concept,
which I'll describe in a little bit, it's like you're able to experience it.
If you can go in person, you can see it in a theater live.
If you can't, like me, you go into a virtual computer generated space.
Think of it like that.
We meet, Diane.
We sit and we meet as avatars in a lobby, and we can talk, and we can see things
around us, and then we can go into the theater and watch the show together.
It's a community experience.
It's an opportunity to engage and bring this idea of spectacle to others.
In the story, it's set pre-pandemic, where there's four disabled artists
that compete on a reality show called Disabled Got Talent.
As the story progresses, we explore themes of illness and mental health
and identity and transformation through the lens of this reality show.
The 14 stages of Grieving and Thriving that I was mentioning
mirror the competition rounds.
So Lis is this playwright and a game developer with
a progressive muscle weakness who dreams of launching this musical carnival game
called Wonder Haven.
When the pandemic hits, it halts the contest, and the characters
are forced to decide, do they want to continue this contest?
And so they end up in Wonder Haven in some fashion, this world
that Lis has created.
And the key question that it's asking is, how can we let the light in
and keep our dreams alive?
And that is what I'm also exploring as a alternate title is how the light gets in.
So that's another thing that I'm playing with.
And I'll just say really quickly to sum this project, we secured $65,000 to
produce a proof of concept in Baltimore, working with Open Circle Theater.
They're a disability-led theater in the DC Metro area.
We were able to do this proof of concept.
This will evolve into a full hybrid production through '27, we're thinking.
Musicals take a long time to get to stage.
The exciting thing is we were It's selected for a Doris Duke
Performing Arts Technology Lab R&D grant.
That means that we are exploring the tech and the accessibility elements for
the project over the next five months.
It's important to me. We'll talk about accessibility specifically and
why that's so important to me personally.
But this is also not just about the concept.
It's so easy to talk to people and go, Wow, look at this cool
virtual lobby that you've created! But I also want to root the story in
centering disability, authentic, making sure that it's an emotionally
driven story and not just an interesting concept.
Then the last thing I'll say is it's developing a model for
radically accessible hybrid theater.
That's the intent of this.
It's fun to be pioneering this new concept.
It's really interesting because working on music
specifically, and trying to work with people who can
find solutions of playing differently,
like teaching children to see music education in another way
and to integrate ASL,
but also to play with the virtual instruments
that could allow to play without touch.
But we are so so far from what
the technology in theater can offer.
It must be fun to think of the new generation of theater where artificial
intelligence or IT could be included, and then we are in the whole universe.
That's what we are doing with your team.
That's what we're striving to do.
I will say, I feel like we have a little ways to go
with accessibility, particularly.
Here's an example.
When we did our proof concept, we got a first-hand look at, okay, most people
will log into a website in order to create an avatar, and then they get into
a space that is now the virtual theater. It's just a website.
It's not a whole new app.
However, if you are low vision or blind, you may need a screen reader.
Well, how much of this is keyboard-based versus mouse?
What can the screen reader read and do?
How efficient? How can you navigate these areas?
That's just one example.
Then within the platform itself, are there ways that we can use,
not saying haptics, but all kinds of different tools for immersive?
There's so many great things happening, and we get an opportunity to work with
XR Access, which is a consortium out of Cornell, to be a consultant on this.
I'm really excited by that because they work with with disability, specifically
with XR and mixed reality and AR, all these terms that are in relation
to the VR world without necessarily having to have VR glasses on.
There's a lot, like you say, it's opening up in an interesting way.
But I also say, so one of the most exciting things for me
was my participation was by robot.
I'm reimagining access in different ways than just traditional
when we think of the physical access.
Obviously, we think of digital access.
We'll talk about what accessibility means.
But for me, that also is expanding it because I couldn't be there.
Now people people like me as a behind the scenes, so to speak, as a playwright
or a designer, can participate.
I did that for our whole production for two weeks by robot.
That means I was able to control the robot from home.
I'm able to navigate in the space differently than just say, relegated to
a Zoom square in the corner.
It's amazing.
It's amazing, yeah.
It's a good segue to this question, what does accessibility
in the arts mean for you?
Yeah.
In general, I believe that it means everybody, regardless of ability,
can create and experience and enjoy art fully and without barriers.
When we talked what I was sharing a little bit, I think my work is more
on the digital right now side and the inclusive side, making sure
people with disabilities are part of design, et cetera.
But access extends to physical, sensory, and cognitive,
and programmatic, all these areas.
In my work, I feel like my advocacy has been around...
I've been a passionate artist, and I've worked extensively as advocate in the
chronic illness communities since 2018.
So my take is like, I'm ensuring that people with chronic illness can
have access to arts in different ways.
When I launched, like I say, a light in the darkness that I was talking about.
I collaborated with 50 artists, and I produced live multimedia events.
I hosted an online summit in June of 2020 called How to Thrive with Chronic Illness
that had 1,800 participants after a year of videoing interviews with experts that
I recorded from home and many from bed.
This is all stuff that I'm doing as somebody living with chronic illness
to help others in my community thrive.
Then I've also engaged with disabled communities over
the Grieving Project as the audiobook.
I have a support group that is part of my own illness community
called Myocytis Support and Understanding, where I ran workshops.
I've been able to work with theater company for a virtual reading
where I cast disabled actors.
I've worked with Open Circle Theater on accessibility-driven virtual
workshops, and even my work in RAMPD.
RAMPD is Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities.
Diane knows because she's a professional member of RAMPD, too.
I was Secretary and Engagement Coach here.
Even before that, I was working on partnerships to help make
the Grammys more accessible.
A lot of my work actually is around access in different ways
than I would have ever thought that access is actually happening.
Then directly in my project, in the Grieving Project,
it is disability-led, created for, by, with people with disabilities,
with rooted in accessibility.
We hired a accessibility director.
We had a director of artistic sign language.
We had the basic, when I would say basic, like assistive devices,
if people need it, et cetera.
But then beyond that, as I was saying, we were trying to figure out how
do we really include everyone from the top of this project,
from building in access rather than thinking about access as an afterthought.
That's the key for our project is we say, Hey,
access extends to all aspects
of the project and all people, including me.
We're not thinking just our audiences.
What has been fabulous in this initiative to work with the Grammys
is that they were responding.
They were actually listening which is rare for big organizations that are like,
Oh, no, we have to accessibilize our thing again.
No, not at all.
They were like, Okay, these people are awesome.
Let's listen to them.
Yeah, Yes, but Diane, and. Oh, yes, and that.
And accessibility is good for everyone.
And that is something that we're starting to really...
That message is coming across.
I've heard it touted many times of curb cuts.
That initially it might have been for wheelchairs.
But people who have babies in strollers, moms with babies in strollers, use them.
So in other words, if we create accessible experiences,
then We're doing it for more.
In my project, my priority, my focus is people with
chronic illness and disabilities.
And yet I know that it's going to speak to economic, it's going
to speak to geography, people who can't get to theater for that,
for people who have problems with physical access at theaters.
So there's different communities that we're going to be able to serve.
And of course, since it's online, we're talking worldwide now.
So this is exciting It's exciting to me.
I'm not saying we're the first at all to be creating hybrid theater by any means,
but I don't see a lot of hybrid theater creating full musicals in a metaverse
style, like a virtual environment.
I also don't see it that's rooted in disability.
That's what I feel like our advantage or whatever we call it
that we can bring to the table.
Absolutely.
Well, this is fantastic.
Congratulations because it's really huge.
Even if it's just a proof of concept right now, everything you've accomplished
so far with this team, it's great.
Thank you.
I have a last question for you.
It's about people who might have impacted you in your career or inspired you.
If you had to think of one or two people who really counted in the progression
of your career, who would it be and why?
Yeah.
Honestly, right now, because I wasn't necessarily thinking of the past so much,
is the present, and that is Lachi.
So RAMPD has at its helm, the definition of a rock star, in my opinion.
She's the founder of RAMPD.
She was the past president for the times that I served alongside her for a while.
And I've served alongside her while she was president.
And so I've gotten to know her monthly, through monthly meetings,
et cetera, as well as different ways.
Watching her lead and grow RAMPD while skyrocketing her own career
has been very motivating and empowering.
She gives all of us a platform to rise and shine.
She shines her light brightly in everything she does.
She's this exceptional leader, and she's a staunch, tireless advocate
and uber talented artist.
She promotes disability advocacy work while excelling in her own career.
To me, it's like she elevates disability culture,
fights for authentic representation, and promotes identity pride.
I have had this excellent role model and shows me, let's put it this way,
when I first was on the fence about how
I personally felt as a disabled artist,
I was still using differently able.
I was still using terms like that because
I had a community who thought that dis
meant different, separate in a negative way, not necessarily in a way that was like,
Hey, we should celebrate this. This is part of us.
We're cool.
We bring problem solving in all these different ways because not despite.
I always think of that.
I don't know if I got that from Lachi, but that feeling
for me is because not despite.
She's bold and unapologetic, and she makes disability visibility a priority.
It doesn't matter whether she's performing or speaking to somebody at the White House
or on a call with RAMPD members.
Everywhere that I've been able to experience what she brings
has been very empowering.
If you use the word inspiration with her, she might shoot you.
She always says, and this is fascinating, It's interesting to me because I have
affiliated myself with inspiration, muse.
I'm the one who's supposed to inspire in my head as my artist persona.
And that extended into my life, which made it hard to grieve in some ways
because I'm always supposed to be the positive one and not be.
So for her, an inspiration, we had a conversation once that
it's about, what do I inspire you to do?
To act?
And so that's where she wants to be affiliated
with inspiration in some fashion.
But a lot of people in the disability world have this whole thing about
"disability porn," meaning just because somebody gets out of bed and gets to
the store, don't mean that's inspiring.
That's just what they do.
And I'm saying it facetiously because it's true.
Even my director has shared an experience about her pumping gas
while in a wheelchair, and that being something
that somebody else had to comment on as very inspiring.
Now, I know that some of these people are well-intentioned.
They are not meaning harm to Susie in this case.
They just don't know.
I don't know.
We could have a conversation for 40 more minutes on this.
Yeah, for sure.
But speaking of conversation, it comes with the conversation.
It comes with the communication.
It comes with...
I'm a wheelchair user, so I have that a lot.
People come to me and say, Oh, you're so inspiring.
That's the way people have been taught to see disability.
Now, how to change the narrative, how to change the education,
and how to change the non-intentional
behavior, it's by speaking with people.
I constantly, constantly have that.
Yes, I can imagine.
And, yes, and that, for me, I'm okay with being inspirational,
not because I'm disabled, but because something I'm doing is giving somebody
an impact of some sort.
And Lachi does that for me.
So yes, she does motivate me sometimes to act, and that's what she's about.
That's where the inspiration comes in.
So yes, if somebody says, Wow, you're really inspirational,
that's okay for my artist identity.
It may not be okay my disability identity, but it's okay for me personally.
That's just where I'm at.
I'm sure you're going to be a role model for someone
who's listening or seeing your work.
Yeah, that's great.
Well, thank you so much.
It was great talking about all your fascinating projects
and really best of luck for everything.
Thank you for having me.
I just love what you're doing.
I'm so glad that you're here to share, uplift, promote artists.
It's a great opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Talk soon in another project.
Have a great day..
♪ Closing theme music ♪