The disabled take the stage.

• Author: Lucht, Beth

Like many professional actors, Randy Sands dresses flamboyantly. The day I stand outside with him, chatting while he smokes a cigarette, he is wearing a brightly colored scarf on his head, topped by a baseball cap. A stocky man of thirty, he sports a red belt with metal studs, sunglasses, and twelve colored armbands, emblazoned with slogans ranging from "Courage Faith Love" to "Drive Out the Bush Administration."

Inside, Sands has a little trouble with some lines in a new play he is rehearsing. Told that his character is that of a plumber who is also a rap artist, Sands asks for "two turntables and a microphone." He is confused when he's told to do his faux-scratch routine on the back of the plumber's snake he's carrying. Finally, staff member Moritz Burnard comes in and stands next to Sands, rapping with him. Burnard's job title is artistic associate, though he's really part director and part job coach. Sands is a professional actor with a cognitive disability, and he and Burnard work together at the Encore Studio for the Performing Arts in Madison, Wisconsin.

Just as the often-offensive Farrelly brothers are winning unlikely praise from groups such as the American Association of People with Disabilities for utilizing actors with disabilities in the recently released The Ringer, a growing number of theater companies are employing disabled actors.

Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts was founded in Minneapolis in 1992. It began solely as a theater company, but the group expanded to include a gallery space in 1996. It produces two original plays a year and has toured both nationally and internationally. Its actors are paid as independent contractors for time spent in rehearsal and performance.

Former Executive Director Gregory Stavrou estimates that about 97 percent of the people who appear onstage in the center's plays have disabilities, including developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, physical disabilities, and mental illness. Stavrou feels it is important to incorporate the experiences of individuals who are culturally marginalized. "They have important perspectives that need to be part of the dialogue," he says.

Ultimately, working with actors who have disabilities isn't that much different from working with their nondisabled colleagues, Stavrou says.

"All actors have strengths and weaknesses," he reflects, "and it's the responsibility of a good director to work with those strengths and weaknesses so the...