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Cripping-up

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The act of casting a non-disabled actor in a disabled role

Cripping-up is the act of casting an actor without a visible disability into a role which is scripted as having visible disability, or is about an historical figure who is know to have had a disability. The term is from the audience's perspective where the visibly apparent disability is mimicked by an actor who who does not have physical, sensory or communication disability. This does not include disabled actors being cast in roles with different conditions to their own, or the practice of transposing their condition in to a role because they have a "lived experience" of visible disability and ableism.

The term "cripping-up" began to appear in mainstream media around 2010.. It is a derivative of the word "crip" and is used to call out certain casting practices in stage, TV drama and film production with particular focus on The Academy Awards on screen and the portrayal of disabled icons such as King Richard III, Frida Kahlo or Joseph Merrick, or disabled fictional characters such as Tiny Tim, Meshak Gardiner or Nessarose on stage. The academic discussion, focuses on the extent of the practice and the nuances in its interpretation, which extends to exploring the differences between embodiment and impersonation, and how without the lived experience of disability changes the relationship between the audience and the production through ‘the cure of the curtain call’ (i.e. the moment when a non-disabled performer is revealed as such after portraying a disabled character). This issue was further mapped out in the MacTaggart lecture delivered by screenwriter Jack Thorne at the Edinburgh Television Festival in 2021.

A call against cripping-up has become part of the disability rights movement, and a vocal lobby of acting and creative professions are actively engaged with the industry for more authentically and creatively when it comes to disability portrayal. This includes industry professionals such as the director of My Left Foot, Jim Sheridan and others within the industry have joined this call for change. This has led to instances such as disabled actors and writers calling on the UK TV and film industry at BAFTA to be more proactive.

As a result, there are more TV, Film and stage productions are casting authentically or incidentally, with organisations like Netflix and BBC Studios forming a disabled writers partnership, The Profile was launched in 2021 which is casting resource created by the Royal National Theatre giving the industry access to professional disabled actor showcases. Channel 4 (UK) created new guidance for portrayal, and the Creative Diversity Network (CDN) has developed the data platform Diamond, which is used by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Paramount, S4C, Warner Bros. Discovery, UKTV and Sky TV to obtain consistent diversity data on programmes they commission which includes disability representation onscreen.

There are parallels with movement for better representation for Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities which have led the way with colour-blind casting, that covers incidental portrayal. The emotion felt by disabled communities was summed up by Frances Ryan in The Guardian 2015.

"...disabled characters create powerful images and sentiments for audiences. They can symbolise the triumph of the human spirit over so-called “adversity”. They can represent what it is to be “different” in some way, an outsider or an underdog who ultimately becomes inspirational. These are universal feelings every audience member can identify with. And there is something a little comforting in knowing, as we watch the star jump around the red carpet, that none of it – the pain or negativity we still associate with disability – was real. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Perhaps as a society we see disability as a painful external extra rather than a proud, integral part of a person, and so it doesn't seem quite as insulting to have non-disabled actors don prosthetics or get up from a wheelchair when the director yells “cut”. But for many disabled people in the audience, this is watching another person fake their identity. When it comes to race, we believe it is wrong for the story of someone from a minority to be depicted by a member of the dominant group for mass entertainment. But we don't grant disabled people the same right to self-representation."

The call for change in industry practices has come from organisations such as 1in4 Coalition, Equity UK, TripleC, UK Disability Arts Alliance as well as disabled actors such as Kurt Yeager, Amy Trigg and Liz Carr

Visible disability characteristics

Disability portrayal, whether it is authentic or incidental, focuses on cultural markers that show the audience a character has trait, need or condition without having to state what the condition is. Traits or needs are aspects of a character a writer or director may identify without stating what the cause is, because the cause my not be central to the story. When stories are about historical figures their conditions are often well documented.

Fictional characters can be less obvious and often disability characteristics are described rather than the writer medically naming specific conditions. This can be seen in plays like The Metamorphosis where the changing into a bug, the main character has difficulty interfacing with a world that is neither designed for him or accepting of him, which are core to understanding what is referred to as the disability lived experience.

The works of Samuel Beckett use literal disability as a metaphor to explore ideas of hopelessness, dependency and autonomy, but the characters such as Winnie and Willie in Happy Days, Pozzo and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, and Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell in Endgame, all have physical disability characteristics. In her book, Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance, author Hannah Simpson reveals how Beckett's theatre compulsively interrogates alternative embodiments, unexpected forms of agency, and the extraordinary social interdependency of the human body.

On Screen

Disabled roles have been played by non-disabled actors going back to the silent era, with films like The Penalty in 1920, and City Lights 1931 an Frankenstein 1931, being early examples where non-disabled actors played disabled character on-screen.

There were few disabled actors before the 1990s available to play authentic or incidental roles, and the few examples were mostly covered by only 6 actors;

Historically the majority of disabled roles went to non-disabled actors but with more disabled actors available, the number of instances of cripping-up has decreased with the majority of disabled characters being authentically cast:

On Stage

Disabled characters in stage plays have a longer history stretching as far back as Tiresias in Oedipus, by Sophocles. There are many disabled historical disabled figures as well as disabled fictional characters such as Laura in The Glass Menagerie, Meshak Gardiner in Coram Boy, Colin in The Secret Garden, Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Barquentine in Gormenghast or The Monster in Frankenstein, that whom, up until recently, have not been accessible to disabled actors. Like film and television, this has changed with mainstream theatre companies casting more disabled actors and enabling the disabled community to reclaim their stories.

Richard III

A role that has been at the forefront of the Theatre and Disability movement is the Duke of Gloucester/The King in Shakespeare's play Richard III. This is not because the king himself had scoliosis, which is exaggerated in the play, but one of the key themes of the play is Ableism and the attitudes of his family and the court towards Richard, in part shaping whom he became and how he acted.

Since 2004, King Richard III has been played by the following disabled actors:

Disability Characteristics in Shakespeare's Plays

Richard III has been at the forefront of the discussion but because Disability as an identity did not exist until the 20th century, looking for disability in the canon has come down to looking for disability characteristics in historical records, such as the recent discovery of Henry VIII's disability from the age of 44 and his use of mobility aids such as sticks, and early type of wheelchair ad a hoist to help him upstairs. For other characters there are social standings such as The Fool, being someone who was often a person with either a learning, cognitive or physical disability such as cerebral palsy. For other characters there are clues left by Shakespeare himself, such as the mention of Katherina's limp or the characters being names "Gobbo", in the Merchant of Venice, which was an offensive Italian word for Hunchback.

As disability was used as a dramatic as well as factual device, in the plays disabled characters are often referred to as “deformed”, “crippled”, “sick” or “monstrous.”

As disability was more commonplace due to wars, poor healthcare and accident, it's characteristics are also less catalogued except for royalty or high standing noblemen such as Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, whom like Richard III had scoliosis.

As such Disability as a casting decision could be made for 26 characters 19 plays, out of the 1,233 across the entire canon, which is 2.1 %. As disability was historically more prevalent than today, which is in excess of 8%, if a director is looking for historical accuracy there is a lot of headroom for incidental disability casting.

Authentic Disability Casting in Shakespeare's Plays
Play Character Disability Characteristic or Signifier
Julius Caesar Julius Caesar Was known to suffer from epilepsy and suffered from the associated stigma from being disabled.
Henry VI  pt 3 Richard Plantagenet – later Duke of Gloucester Richard III was known to have scoliosis however Shakespeare exaggeration of his characteristics and focus on his lived experience as a disabled person and the ableism he has and does endure leaves casting open to wide interpretation.
King Lear Earl of Gloucester Physical disability "palsy" and later Vision Impaired.
Macbeth The Witches These are based on the three Graeae witches from Greek Mythology who were physically and vision disabled. Witches having disabilities is also common in British folklore and as such casting disabled actors is culturally and historically approprite.
Othello Othello Othello has a seizure in Act 4, Scene 1 which could be a signifier of other conditions, including but not limited to epilepsy.
Richard III and The Wars of the Roses King Richard III See Henry VI pt 3.

Richard has scoliosis and this is probably the first play ever written about ableism

The Merchant of Venice Lancelot Gobbo See Fools and the name "Gobbo" being an insult as it means "hunchback".
The Merchant of Venice Old Gobbo Vision Impaired
The Taming of The Shrew Katherina Referred to as having "a limp"
The Tempest Caliban His physical disability and deformity are a core part of the characterisation.

Fools and Disability

Fools were often people with learning, cognitive of physical disabilities and so disability casting is open to creative interpretation.

The following characters were ether identified or written as Fools and therefore could be considered as appropriate for authentic disability casting.

Incidental Portrayal

More than 7% of the general public in the UK and US have a visible disability, despite the efforts of the industry there is a currently a lack of data on whether films, stage productions and TV dramas reflect this. The Creative Diversity Network has started tracking some aspects of disability inclusion in the industry in the UK.

Incidental disability portrayal is different to authentic portrayal as it is about having the right to portray a role regardless of whether a character is scripted as having a disability or not. An example of this is Bridgerton series 3 on Netflix, 2024. Shondaland cast two visibly disabled actors in roles that were not scripted with a disability story. Sophie Woolley was cast as Lady Stowell, and Zak Ford-Williams as Lord Remmington.

Progressive Condition Portrayal

In 2014 despite his award-winning portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking the film The Theory of Everything, the casting of Eddie Redmayne came under scrutiny as to whether portraying someone with a progressive condition constituted "cripping-up", as this raised questions and suggestions that included having two actors, or even using CGI. The practicalities where all theoretical until in contrast the BBC's 2022 drama production Better, cast the disabled actor Zak Ford-Williams in a role where at first he had to mask his cerebral palsy, and then unmask it after his character Owen survives meningitis. Ford-Williams used his experience as a physically disabled actor who has had to learn to walk again twice after medial procedures, which demonstrated the possibility of disabled actors playing progressive conditions.

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