RISE Series E7: Maria Porto and Shane Dittmar (Access Broadway NY)
The Women & Theatre RISE Series presents mini-interviews conducted at the Inaugural RISE Summit with network partners of RISE Theatre, all of which are organizations working to increase equity in the theatre industry. In this episode, Hayley and Amy talk with Maria Porto and Shane Dittmar from Access Broadway NY. Scroll down for episode notes and transcript!
Episode Notes
Hosts: Hayley Goldenberg and Amy Andrews
Guest: Maria Porto and Shane Dittmar, Access Broadway NY
Music: Chloe Geller
Listen to all published episodes of the Women & Theatre RISE Series here.
Many thanks to RISE Theatre, Maestra Music, Playbill, and all the amazing organizations working to increase equity in theatre!
Episode Resources:
Follow Access Broadway on Instagram
Accessibility requests/needs: Please email accessbroadwayny@gmail.com
About Access Broadway NY:
Access Broadway NY is a group of consultants, advocates and strategists that use their combined experiences to create a thorough and clear map to Accessibility for you and your entertainment venue. They hope to not only connect with their clients but to create long lasting mutually respectful relationships.
Access Broadway NY believes in making Theatre truly Accessible for all, from impartial advice to a complete Access Audit to help make the most of your space. They strive to help entertainment venues create paths for accessibility in all areas.
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Episode Transcript
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to the Women & Theatre RISE Series! We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews! On this series, we share mini-interviews conducted at the Inaugural RISE Summit with network partner organizations of RISE Theatre.
Hayley: We’re thrilled to uplift these amazing organizations that are working to make the theatre industry a more equitable space.
Amy: Today, we’re excited to share our interview with Maria Porto and Shane Dittmar of Access Broadway NY.
(Music)
Hayley: Hello, beautiful people! We are here at the Women & Theatre Podcast booth at the RISE Summit with Maria Porto and Shane Dittmar from Access Broadway NY. Thank you so much for being here! Maria, if you could please share your pronouns and tell us a little bit about Access Broadway NY, that would be wonderful.
Maria: Thank you! So my name is Maria, my pronouns are she/her, and Access Broadway New York is a disability-led consulting service that works in live entertainment. We work on establishing intentional accessibility and designing programs for all people so that theatre can be truly accessible to all.
Hayley: Fabulous! And Shane, could you introduce yourself as well?
Shane: Yeah. I’m Shane Dittmar, my pronouns are they/them, and that all sounds pretty cool, and I’d love to get involved. (laughter) No, and I do some consulting with Access Broadway.
Hayley: Fabulous.
Amy: Thank you both for being here with us today. I would love to hear from each of you about something you’re working on right now that’s lighting you up.
Shane: Ooh! What is lighting me up right now? I have so many cool things that I get to work on. I am a musical theatre writer and a writer of a lot of things, so there’s a lot of writing projects I’m doing right now that are fun and exciting. And also getting to go do some of the accessibility networking and education stuff that Maria and I have gotten to do lately is really cool. Getting to talk to theatres that are excited to learn about accessibility. Those are some of the things. Also, like, coffee.
Amy: Oh, I hear that. Yeah. Maria, how about you? What’s lighting you up right now?
Maria: A couple of things. I definitely am lit up by the work that Shane, myself, and the other consultants get to do. We’ve worked on three projects in the last year that have really meant something to me because we’ve built it from the ground up and were really given some artistic freedom to build those programs.
But what I’m very focused on at the moment is: We are designing a software that is written by disabled people for disabled people to gate closed captioning, open captioning, and audio description in the theatre setting. What that looks like for me is I’ve been working with a team of developers. Shane is super, super modest in the fact that they are also a coder and accessibility consultant for online platforms. And so we are trying to make this the first ever program that really is designed by the people that will be using it.
Hayley: That’s amazing. Maria, could you share a little bit about one of the biggest challenges that you see facing the theatre industry right now?
(Shane reacts)
Hayley: Shane had a visceral response to that. (laughter)
Maria: I think one of the biggest issues that we face right now is that we don’t put - we don’t put power in the people that are telling the story or having the lived experience or in the actual space - the power that they deserve to be able to tell their stories and to be able to design things that would actively benefit their lives on a day-to-day, right?
We have lighting designers who have disabilities, we have sound engineers that have disabilities. Designing programs by them, for them, is something that isn’t really done in theatre, right? We have a bunch of stories about people with disabilities with creative teams that are non-disabled. So we can’t give the power to the actors, who may be cast authentically, or the house managers that may have disabilities working on these amazing shows - their due because we don’t start from the top down. And I think what challenges theatre at the moment is - how do we get all kinds of representation at the top? Instead of just telling people at the bottom, “You know, you really should be advocating more.”
Hayley: Yeah. Shane, did you want to weigh in on that?
Shane: Just to add that as a part of that, I think in the theatre industry, we think more and talk more about audiences with disabilities than about theatre professionals with disabilities. So even in spaces where a show is working on making sure that they have wheelchair-accessible seats, where the house management and the front-of-house teams are involved in trying to have the kinds of accommodations that people need to enjoy the show…the show is probably not being made by people with disabilities, even if it’s explicitly about people with disabilities.
Sometimes we show up as script consultants, sometimes we show up as assistants, sometimes we show up in other capacities, but the writers, the department heads, the creative team, the people who have backend participation in shows - those people aren’t typically disabled, even when the show is explicitly trying to target a disabled audience or tell a disabled story. Because there’s some perception out there that we don’t exist or that we can’t get good enough at our jobs to be working at a professional level as designers, as technicians, as composers, as directors, as dramaturgs… It’s a system where the people with disabilities, even when we start being inclusive, don’t get included, like Maria said, at the top.
Amy: Thank you for sharing that, both of you. I’d love to hear from each of you - what is one small step that listeners can take to make the theatre industry a more equitable space?
Shane: Okay, so for your listeners with millions of dollars, I would recommend - My Venmo is…
Amy: Oh my gosh. (Laughter)
Shane: No. Um… The honest answer is, I think anytime you assume that there aren’t disabled people around you or doing what you do or caring about what you’re caring about or thinking about what you’re thinking about, start telling yourself that you’re making an incorrect assumption. Because there are a profound number of people with disabilities living and working and existing in the world, and some disabilities, many disabilities, are not visible. If you believe yourself in a field of a large enough size - in a group of people like the group that’s here today - or if you’re thinking about peers of yours from college, people who do what you do, and you think there are no disabled people in that group, you’re wrong. So the small thing you can do is just think about that any time you neglect to imagine a disabled person in a space. Because we are there.
Amy: Maria, what about you?
Maria: I think, in addition to that main point, is understanding that all accessibility accommodations are not just for disabled people. I think that’s one of the really interesting things that I’ve been learning, especially in my consultancy work, both here and in London, is during the pandemic, 78% of streaming users turned on closed captioning, regardless of disability or not. It is not just a “disability-only” problem, it is an everybody problem, right?
Accessibility and accessibility services make theatre accessible for everyone. It is not just one community. I learn so much from accessibility services that don’t really apply to me, right? It’s not a level of accommodation that I need, but it is something that gives me such a well-rounded view of what this theatre piece could be that it gives me more information than I would have had just seeing it with the only accommodation that I do need, right?
And so thinking about - not only would this help disabled people, but would this help me? If I’m cooking and have kids at home and want to watch Netflix, captions are helpful, you know? If I want to be in the other room doing dishes, audio description will let me know what’s going on in the program that I love. And apply that to theatre. Apply that to your writing room, right? Is my audition material for this piece accessible? Because then I can’t say that I didn’t offer it to the masses, right? I always hear, you know, “We can’t hire disabled people because they didn’t audition.” Well, are your materials accessible? Because that blocks us at the door.
Hayley: Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Could you share where our listeners can find out more information about each of you and also about Access Broadway NY on the internet?
Shane: My Venmo is… (laughter) You can find links to all of my social media and stuff at shanedittmar.com. That’s S-H-A-N(as in Nancy)-E-D(as in David)-I-T(as in Tom)-T(as in Tom again)-M(as in Mary)-A-R.com.
Maria: My name is Maria Porto. I am on the socials as mariaporto.2. That dot was apparently very important. And then Access Broadway can be found on Instagram, Facebook @accessbroadwayny, and also if you are a person who has an accessibility request or need, please feel free to email accessbroadwayny@gmail.com.
Amy: Amazing. Thank you both for speaking with us today, and thank you all for listening to our conversation with Maria Porto and Shane Dittmar of Access Broadway New York.
All: Bye!
(Music)
Amy: Women & Theatre is a proud network partner of RISE Theatre.
Hayley: Thank you so much to RISE, Maestra, Playbill, and RISE Program Manager Victoria Detres for collaborating with us on this series. Thank you for listening to the Women & Theatre Podcast. We’re your hosts, Hayley Goldenberg…
Amy: …and Amy Andrews! If you like what you heard, subscribe and give us a 5-star review wherever you listen.
Hayley: You can also follow us on social @womenandtheatreproject to make sure you never miss an episode.
Amy: The music for this show was written by talented Women & Theatre community member Chloe Geller.
Hayley: Thanks again for listening, everyone. See you next time!
Amy: Bye!
