CFTC For numerous people, getting a bottle of water off a shelf is an easy, mindless task. A person with a disability, however, might need to use a broom to knock the bottle down.
?That?s why we decided arts and people with disabilities are a natural fit. You have to get creative just to live your daily life,? says Betty Siegel, the director of VSA, a nonprofit that assists artists with disabilities. (?VSA? once stood for ?Very Special Arts?; now it stands alone.)
VSA is celebrating its 40th anniversary with two weeks of performances and exhibits at the Kennedy Center. The ?25/40 Celebration? also commemorates the 25th birthday of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The festival will showcase artists with disabilities, among them a deaf DJ, a vision-impaired painter and a drummer with just one hand.
Siegel hopes the festival will challenge assumptions about what people with disabilities are capable of, but her chief goal is to showcase some great art, she says.
?Deaf hip-hop artist Sean Forbes and Robbie Wilde, our deaf DJ, are hosting a big dance party,? she says. ?I hope we rock the Kennedy Center in a way that makes the dust fall off the ceiling.?
Three years ago, Jason Barnes was getting ready to go on an East Coast tour with his reggae band. Then, while working as a freelance industrial oven cleaner, Brian got shocked with 22,000 volts of electricity.
?It was really devastating. I thought I wasn?t going to be able to play music anymore. Then, one day, I was bored and pissed off at life, and I dug my drum kit out of the garage, taped a stick to my nub, and tried to play. It hurt really bad ? I still had bandages and stitches and fourth-degree burns, but it was a boost of inspiration to me to not give up.?
Barnes met up with engineers at Georgia Tech, and eventually got a much better prosthesis. The contraption allows him to hold two drumsticks in his correct ?hand,? and control the tightness of his grip. Barnes manipulates one of the sticks by flexing his bicep. The other has a mind of its own.
The prosthesis, which was funded by a National Science Foundation grant, makes Barnes into something of a cyborg. Now Brian can play faster, and more precisely, than any mere human.
?It?s like something out of science fiction,? Brian says. ?If I hold my arm a sure way, the robot drumstick pops out and just starts playing along.?
Barnes will be jamming with a band of human and robot musicians from Georgia Tech at the Kennedy Center next week. His bandmates include Shimon, a marimba-playing robot that can improvise on the fly, and the Shimis ? a trio of adorable machines that dance and sing like superfans.
?Things you used to think were fake are actually kind of true now,? Brian says. ?That?s better for people like me, I guess.?
At age 7, Robbie Wilde lacking most of his hearing to a series of untreated ear infections. Today, Wilde is an internationally acclaimed DJ, something that many people told him would be impossible.
?They assume that since I?m a deaf DJ, I?m going to mess up my sets and train wreck between mixes,? Brian explained via email. ?But that doesn?t happen. I?ve trained for 10 years, went to Dubspot Scratch School in NYC for two years ? and put many, many hours into my craft.?
Wilde will be spinning an eclectic mix of dubstep, hip hop and funk at a Kennedy Center dance party Monday. He?ll use his remaining hearing as well as music visualization software to mix songs and scratch in time to the music. Wilde also uses the app Musixmatch to understand what singers are saying.
?I have difficulty hearing and understanding lyrics, but the artist?s vocals become more of an instrument for me,? he says. ?Do I listen it differently from hearing people? Absolutely. But the fact that I use all the other senses, I like to think I?m enjoying it a little more.?
?How would they get me to the police station? I can?t get into a car. Would they just pick me up and exit my wheelchair behind??
This isn?t entirely hypothetical. For her ?Stare at Shannon? Web series, DeVido does do matters that might get a person arrested. In one episode, she sat in a grocery store, opened up an unbought jar of peanut butter and made a sandwich.
?I get away with stuff other people can?t,? says DeVido, who has been using a wheelchair since age 4, due to spinal muscular atrophy. ?If comedy doesn?t job out, I might try being a drug dealer.?
Comedy does seem to be working out for DeVido, and she?ll be doing stand-up Thursday at the Kennedy Center. Her main focus, though, is acting. The best roles, says DeVido, are often those that don?t specifically call for a disabled actor. For instance, she recently appeared on the Amy Poehler-produced Hulu series ?Difficult People? as a deranged storyteller.
Like many young actors, DeVido will take almost any part she can get, including a turn as a mentally disabled rape victim on ?Law & Order: SVU.?
?Maybe later in my career I?ll be at a place where I can say, ?Hey, let?s tone this down,? but I?m not there yet,? she says.
People often assume that DeVido has highbrow disabilities as well as her apparent physical one, DeVido says. She doesn?t let it bother her ? she just adds it to her stand-up set.
?All my stand-up is based on stories from my life,? she says. ?My goal is just to make people laugh, though I like to think I also change what people think about people with disabilities.?
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