A Second Look at Disability Culture increased Calgarians' awareness and appreciation of disability issues by providing authentic, dynamic, and non-sentimental images of disability experience and by integrating disability culture into the creative, artistic, and social life of our community. A Second Look at Disability Culture, therefore, engaged Calgarians in constructive dialogue with people with disabilities, exposed them to new perspectives of disability ethos, educated them in the realities of disability experience, and offered them new ways of appreciating disability culture.

A Second Look at Disability Culture included ten performances and showings in total, representing the work of over forty disabled artists. The Festival's mainstage attraction was the collectively created integrated performance, As I Am. Additional performances included a staged reading of Smudge by blind playwright Alex Bulmer of Toronto's Nightwood Collective; a Reader's Theatre presentation of Thursday Continued by award-winning playwright Larry MacKillop; a Sound Orchestra (we took a wheelchair apart and played it); an Integrated Modern Dance performance; the stand-up comedy performance Smashing Stereotypes; Still Waiting for the Special Bus by the world renown disabled artist Alan Shain from Ottawa; and Video Screenings on hot disability topics like sexual surrogacy. The Festival also hosted a Fine Arts Gallery through which disabled artists showed and sold their work; a Gala Fundraising Cabaret; a free Drumming Circle; and special Guest Appearance by the One Yellow Rabbit ensemble.

Calgary SCOPE Society
Stage Left Productions

One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre

December, 2002
Big Secret Theatre

Poster
Full schedule
Artist descriptions
Press
  Calgary Sun
  FFWD
Photographs
    As I Am
    Alan Shain
    Fine Arts Festival
    Dis' This & The Sound Orchestra