‘Glass Menagerie’ Actors Set Disabilities Aside : Cast Finds a Personal Message in Its Play

When stage actors wish one another good luck, they traditionally say “break a leg.” The expression gets a special laugh at a current production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” in Granada Hills.

“Don’t say that around here,” joked director Katherine Pavini, 41, of Saugus. “It just might happen.”

Pavini has epilepsy and walks with a cane. Three of the actors in the four-character drama also have disabilities that make movement difficult. Exceedingly open about their limitations, they enjoy kidding one another about who is the likeliest to knock over the table of glass animals that gives the play its name.

Once a Poster Child

“It won’t be me, because they’re my animals,” said Diane Woody, 20, of Northridge. The one-time Arthritis Foundation poster child plays Laura, a girl so painfully shy that she lives mainly in the imaginary world of her glass menagerie. Laura is lame, the only character in the play that Williams wrote as disabled.

“I won’t be the one who runs into it,” promised Rik Johnson, 22, of Van Nuys, who is blind and who plays Jim, the gentleman caller. “It will be one of you who can see.”

“The Glass Menagerie” is the third production done through the Artistic, Cultural and Entertainment program of the Office of Disabled Student Services at California State University, Northridge. Performed at the Granada Theatre, the play opened last weekend and concludes with shows Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Completing the cast are Jill Grigsby, 19, of Saugus, who has cerebral palsy and plays the mother, Amanda, and the production’s only non-disabled actor, Donald Morris, 19, of Sun Valley, who plays Laura’s brother, Tom.

Director Pavini, a senior at CSUN, has previously directed disabled actors in “The Odd Couple” and “Barefoot in the Park.” She said she chose “The Glass Menagerie” solely because “I love Tennessee Williams and I was ready to do something serious.” Nevertheless, Williams’ script at times offers an uncanny commentary on the actors performing it.

Fantasy World

The play’s Laura is psychologically undone by her crippled leg. She becomes a recluse, choosing to live in a fantasy world rather than risk rejection and disappointment in the real one. Hers is an extreme example of the kind of life the character Tom decries when he talks of people herding into movie theaters to live vicariously through the adventures of Hollywood actors.

The performers in this production make the opposite choice, stepping from darkness into the footlights. The actors said their willingness to perform despite their disabilities makes them the exception rather than the norm.

“The majority of disabled students are afraid of being seen around other disabled students,” said Woody, whose arthritis causes her to limp and to use her hands with difficulty.

The courage to be conspicuous despite physical impairment is particularly evident in Jim Hammitt, 45, of Sun Valley, producer of “The Glass Menagerie.” Hammitt’s cerebral palsy is so severe that most people cannot understand his speech. When he addresses audiences at performances of the play, he does so with a interpreter at his side.

Since all performances are translated into American Sign Language, the scene makes a touching tableau--Hammitt speaking, his personal interpreter repeating his words and a third person repeating them in sign language.

Universal Theme

“The point about disabilities,” Hammitt said, “is that they are in everyone. But people who let them consume them will be totally disabled.”

Pavini agreed.

“That’s the theme of the play,” she said. “It’s that everyone in the world has their own limitations, so they can fall prey to being trapped in their own glass menagerie. Or they can be courageous and take a risk.”

Cast members said there are about 500 disabled students at CSUN. Although the general student population was invited to audition as well, very few aspiring actors showed up.

“I was pulled in because they couldn’t find a Tom among the disabled or the able-bodied at CSUN,” said Morris, who attends Los Angeles Valley College. “Maybe the able-bodied are afraid to act with the disabled.”

Morris said he has performed in 10 plays, two of them with disabled cast members, and that, despite their self-deprecating humor about knocking over props, he has witnessed few limitations.

“Except for small things like making the steps on the stage so they don’t trip, there’s no difference,” he said. “Once the play starts. they become the character, just like any other actor.”

Performers in “The Glass Menagerie” agreed that their problems as actors stem from lack of experience rather than from their physical limitations.

“My hardest thing is to capture the character of Amanda,” said Grigsby, whose cerebral palsy has caused a pronounced limp. “I’m 19 years old, and I play a mother with two children. It’s hard to do that when I haven’t lived anything like it.”

Feeds an Interest

Although the cast’s inexperience is evident at times, they do a creditable job with Williams’ play. All said that taking part has increased their interest in the theater.

“I’ve gotten kind of stage-bitten,” said Woody, a biology major.

Director Pavini contends that physical disabilities should be incidental in the casting of a play, but that prejudice exists in the entertainment industry.

“The first thing a casting director sees is physical appearance,” she said. “If they see a wheelchair and the part doesn’t call for someone in a wheelchair, forget it. But the lead actor in “Barefoot” was a guy in a wheelchair, and his opening line was, ‘Do you know, it’s six flights?’ The whole audience laughed, but still they believed he had somehow gotten that chair up six flights of stairs.”

Thus for Pavini and members of her cast, the best-actress Oscar won Monday night by hearing-impaired Marlee Matlin for her role in “Children of a Lesser God” is not quite the triumph for the disabled that an outsider might expect.

Recognized as Actress

“It’s good that she’s getting recognized for being an actress instead of as a disabled person,” said Woody. “But . . . the part was written for someone hearing-impaired.”

The perfect world envisioned by Pavini, where disabled actors are considered for all types of roles, isn’t likely to exist anytime soon. Yet she readily acknowledges that opportunities for the disabled have widened considerably in recent years.

“Things have changed, there’s no question about it,” she said. “The 19- and 20-year-olds I deal with have no idea how much it has changed. Just the fact that we’re doing this play shows it.”

Pavini said she received 32 electric-shock treatments in the 1960s, when it was thought that the treatments combatted epilepsy. She contended that ignorance, not only on the part of the public but by health professionals, is the biggest obstacle faced by the disabled.

“It isn’t the disability itself that can be so devastating, but what happens because of it,” she said. “In the play, Laura’s key disability is not her physical disability, but her shyness.”