By John Mohler

A Chance Meeting That Started It All

In the late 90s, University of Texas graduate student Chris Strickling met an interesting new classmate. Terry Galloway, a deaf student from Florida, who was in her first semester. She had brought along with her the concept of a story - a show featuring people with disabilities. "We really clicked," Chris says. "She had plenty of information and a reality of her own. There were things that were hard for her. But when Terry wants to do something, it's just going to get done. That was the beginning of Actual Lives.”

Building Something Together

Actual Lives eventually became Art Spark’s acclaimed autobiographical theater initiative that empowered adults with disabilities to transform their personal experiences and stories into dynamic stage performances. Today, the program has evolved into Speaking Advocates and the True Tales of Disability Advocates Podcast.

“It wouldn't have come to anything if we had not met Art Spark Executive Director, Celia Hughes,” Chris continues. “Celia had a good sense of what might fly or not, and could bring in revenue or find a venue.”

"We got to learn to work together. We just got more and more entangled with it and had a lot of fun with it," she says. "We were three women who wanted to do it, and we did it."

In the days before social media, it was more difficult to connect with a wide range of people. "Celia asked me to go to the parks and find people who had disabilities and see how we might piece them into an ensemble. Veterans. Housing challenged. Mental illness. And that was really neat. I got to go and just talk to people and tell them what we were doing. Some people just said. 'Uh, no,' and walked away.”

This on-the-ground recruitment strategy was surprisingly successful. "Almost all the people that said 'yes' did what they said they would do,” Chris says.

The first Actual Lives show took place in a school. "People came out and talked about themselves and made fun of themselves,” she muses. “We made people laugh. And the whole idea was to get them seen, just like you are.”

This initial event sounds exhilarating. "People were going out and doing things on the stage, which they'd never, ever stepped on or rolled on, and they were great. Folks had never seen anything like it.” The memory gives her energy. “We were in a culture that didn't really want to see people with disabilities, especially not speaking. But once we started, Austin was very open.”

"As we went on, we put more people on stage together, and they were really different kinds of people from what was being seen, but all of it had to do with 'I am here. I do have an actual life.' And that's it, that was the whole point - so you can go out in your own community and say to yourself, 'I am somebody. I do have an actual life.'" 

A Standing Ovation in Washington

Just a mention of the epic of bringing Actual Lives to the 2004 International VSA Festival in Washington, D.C., makes Chris roll with laughter. Austin audiences had warmly accepted Actual Lives, but would they in Washington? At first, things didn't look promising. "It shocked all of us, the way that people were. One of the things was how people looked at us when we walked down the street in Washington, with a lot of people who were obviously having difficulty hiding their stares," Chris says. "People would just come up and say, 'Who are you?' It's a lot better now than it was, but when we started, people looked away."

But the Actual Lives cast won over the Capitol crowd with their stellar performances. "In Washington, what we did is put enough energy and make it groovy enough. Really, Terry was a big part of that. Terry was the one who pushed the theatric stuff. I didn't know that we would do that well that quickly. We just cast them in musical numbers that they knew and it was amazing. They had a standing ovation. We were delighted. It made them feel really good.

"And that was probably the best thing that we did together, Terry and Celia and me. The three of us were so different that it was not to be anybody's thing. It's everybody that wanted to do it."

A Lasting Change

After working with Celia and Art Spark Texas, Chris became more focused on working with people with disabilities. "I was just blindly doing all that [work with disabilities]. But Celia said, you know, you can't do this unless you really make a choice to give yourself to it for a while because this stuff takes a long time and it takes money and it takes will, and we'll have to have a group of people who learn with us because we are not the ones who have all the answers. … She's changed me." Chris and Celia continued to work on projects together for years.