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BEYOND VICTIMS AND VILLAINS: CONTEMPORARY PLAYS BY DISABLED PLAYWRIGHTS. Edited by Victoria Ann Lewis. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006; pp. xlv + 406. $19.95 paper.
Playwright John Belluso, who died in 2006, was among the most important of this generation?s disabled authors. But in his early days, Belluso once recalled, he believed himself to be engaged in an isolated enterprise; when he searched as a college freshman for the works of disabled playwrights, there were none to be found. Happily, those who will follow Belluso will not need to experience such a glaring omission, thanks to the publication of Beyond Victims and Villains, the first (and much anticipated) anthology of playwriting by some of today?s most important disabled playwrights.
Disability theatre, created intentionally by artists writing from within disability culture, arose both from the disability rights movement as well as the general flourishing of multicultural playwriting that came to invigorate American theatre during the last three decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, disability studies has come into its own as a new paradigm within academia, at once building on and extending the work of feminism, queer studies, and cultural studies in exploring the social construction of identity and questioning illusory standards of ?normalcy.? Scholars of disability studies and performance such as Victoria Ann Lewis, Carrie Sandahl, and Petra Kuppers have explored this intersection of aesthetics and activism and have been deepening critical discourse about the political activism and artistic innovations represented by disability theatre. Yet for far too long there was no published collection of these plays available for performance use or academic study. It is a testament to the perseverance of...