Purple Spotlight: Chatting with Jordan Campbell about the Purple Stage & Representation – PART 1 | May 8, 2022 | By: Kyla Platsis
This week, I (Kyla) had the privilege of chatting with one of our beloved Purple Carrots facilitators and Purple Stage Artistic Director, Jordan Campbell, to learn a little bit more about the magic that is the Purple Stage!
Positionality Acknowledgement
Before getting into the excitement that is all things Purple Stage related, I would like to acknowledge my own positionality. I am writing this post as an individual who identifies as neurotypical and I recognize the privilege that this can afford. I write this spotlight feature in an effort to further emphasize the need for neurodiversities to be represented in all facets of life, including and particularly in the arts. I would like this blog series to act as a means of calling out the dominance of ableism and the privileging of neurotypical identities. Throughout this post, I will be using both person-first and disability-first language in an effort to be inclusive of all of the potential preferences of our community. It is important to note that the language used should reflect the preferences of the individual(s) one is referring to.
“The Purple Stage is a professional community theatre project that creates neurodiverse theatre projects with members of the Purple Carrots community. We’ve been doing this work with Purple Carrots for a few years, and a lot of our participants [whom] we’ve been working with for years have developed a lot of skills and were making a lot of really cool stuff, and we kind of just wanted to create creative job opportunities for them, and also develop the work further and be able to present it and share it with the public”.
Jordan himself is a theatre artist and has a great passion for producing artistic projects.
“I’ve been working in theatre for years. I went to theatre school and then I started working in the theatre scene in Toronto. I create and produce theatre with my own amazing collaborators and then I started facilitating at Purple Carrots- so this just kind of made sense with my skills as a theatre producer and a theatre major to make these kinds of projects with these artists”.
The Purple Stage is specifically for members of the neurodiverse community. Given that both neurodiverse and disabled individuals continue to be underrepresented in Hollywood and across the entertainment industry, I wanted to hear more from Jordan about what the importance was of this particular theatre company existing.
“There are a lot of theatre companies in Toronto that are doing different kinds of disability-focused work- many of whom I’ve worked with and many who are doing really cool stuff- but I don’t see tons of stuff that is focused on the neurological sides of things…people on the autism spectrum, people with more complex intellectual disabilities…there’s a lot of stuff around physical disabilities and like blind artists and deaf artists and artists who use wheelchairs. I don’t see tons of stuff that really integrates intellectual disabilities”.
Greater representation of neurodiverse identities is essential in the creative industries. Stories – whether they be on the stage, in paintings, or on the screen – are meant to be reflections of ourselves and the world around us. Whether that be giving us a glimpse into a life we’ve never lived by placing us into a character’s shoes we’ve never walked in before, showing us what our reality could be like, or better yet, showing us what our reality currently is and encouraging us to be better – stories simultaneously take us out of our own reality while still asking us to reflect upon it. How can this be truly authentic and meaningful if not everyone’s stories are being represented? How can we create a better world if we are not seeing the entirety of it?
As founder of EPIC Players (a neurodiverse theatre company in New York), Aubrie Therrien, states “You can’t be what you can’t see. So it’s really important for neurodiverse, neurodivergent artists to see themselves represented on stage and screen, and know that it is a job they can do. The arts are a viable employment opportunity. And right now, people with disabilities are severely unemployed in this country” (Song, 2022, para.5). The same can certainly be recognized in Canada. In fact, Jordan identified the creation of creative job opportunities as another reason why both Purple Carrots and the Purple Stage are important:
“…I think it’s significant that we create jobs…like creative jobs for this community that really meet their needs”.
GLAAD’s (as cited in Song, 2022) “Where We Are in TV” 2019 report found that only 2.1% of characters (which is the equivalent of a mere 18 characters) on scripted primetime television represented persons with disabilities. Just last year, a number of actors and professionals working within the entertainment industry signed an open letter asking that Hollywood act in an effort to end the significant discrimination and exclusion of artists with disabilities (Ali, 2021). One of the demands this open letter made was for the inclusion of disability officers in major studios (Ali, 2021). The role of disability officers would essentially be to address ableist practices that create barriers for many artists (Ali, 2021). Another open letter that was created in 2019 stated that out of “…the 61 Oscar nominees and 27 winners who had played characters with a disability, only two had been authentically portrayed by an actor with a disability” (Ali, 2021, para.7). This is an appalling fact that demonstrates the ableism that lies within creative arts professions.
When I asked Jordan if he had any final thoughts that he wanted to share about the Purple Stage, it was about the necessity of creating jobs in the entertainment industry for neurodiverse artists and having the world recognize their work. This seems to be part of a growing conversation – there has started to be some progress in terms of the creation of opportunities for neurodiverse individuals in the arts. For example, Summit School which is located in Montréal, will house the first creative arts center for neurodiverse students in Canada (Schwartz, 2022). There is without a question though, a great deal that still needs to be done.
“I guess I would just say that, as much as it’s for the community, it’s about creating these jobs and creating these projects. A big part of the Purple Stage is about sharing the work with the public, and people’s responses to the first project were really cool. People, I think, learned a lot about themselves and about how they are in the world, so I’m really excited to get back to that. That’s what I’m really thinking about is just returning to the main goal of this, to share the work more broadly and get more people to see the kind of stuff we’re doing. I mean even the class I just did in the winter with the youth class, I really just think it was such a cool show we made and I was like ‘this is something cool people should see’. I do believe that’s what’s important about it, people seeing it as professional theatre”.
Thank you for reading and to Jordan for taking the time! This is only part 1 of our series on the Purple Stage – be sure to stay tuned for the final part of our conversation with Jordan about the Purple Stage and representation.
How excited are you for upcoming Purple Stage projects?
Be sure to show them some love and encouragement on Purple Carrots’ Facebook and Instagram!
