Adapting Art To Build Community: How Maine State Music Theatre Makes Space for Theater-Lovers With Disabilities

Across all the initiatives we support at the Onion Foundation, we hold true to our core value of increasing access to the cultural experiences that inspire and foster learning, creativity, and connection.

As such, we’re proud to support organizations like the Maine State Music Theatre (MSMT). Since the theater was established in 1959, MSMT has remained committed to ensuring everyone has access to restorative and inspiring arts performances.

In the 1970s, MSMT became a nonprofit to help educate young artists in musical theater crafts. Over the decades, theater directors have provided housing for theater professionals and worked to create a thriving arts culture in the area.

But in 2015, the theater took a significant step forward on their path to providing equitable theater experiences by offering a sensory-friendly performance to one young child with autism. In the years following, the MSMT team has used grant funding from the Onion Foundation and other sources to scale the initiative to reach thousands of people with physical and cognitive disabilities — creating a truly inclusive arts space for midcoast Maine.

An Inclusive Space To Revel in the Arts

The Maine State Music Theatre was initially built on inclusive values, and today, the directorial team selects productions, fosters a company-wide culture, and engages the community in ways that foreground those values.

For Curt Dale Clark, MSMT’s artistic director, the theater’s mission isn’t just about putting on captivating performances, but rather caring for the community as a whole: “I consider us responsible for the care and nurturing of the artistic soul of this entire region,” Clark says.

The theater’s sensory-friendly performances enable the artistic team to integrate its values into its work in a very real way. In these productions, the MSMT team adapts nearly all aspects of the performance — including lighting, sound, costuming, and other effects — to create a safe, less overwhelming experience for audiences.

With nearly one in 20 children in the U.S. reporting sensory processing issues and one in 100 with autism, this work is critical to including those often left out of or unable to enjoy traditional programming. It’s also part of a burgeoning effort in Maine: The Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine, for example, offers sensory-friendly play sessions for kids with sensory-processing disorders. Similarly, Portland Ovations sends descriptions of audio and visual components ahead of school performances to enable school leaders to prepare students with dark glasses or earmuffs to mitigate sensory overload.

For Clark and other theater directors in Maine and across the country, these performances are essential to a thriving, inclusive, and equitable arts culture. “We do it because this is the audience of the future,” says Clark.

A Peek Behind the Curtain

In 2023, MSMT hit its biggest season yet for sensory-friendly performances, offering productions of “Rapunzel” and “The Three Little Pigs” in the Pickard Theater, its primary and largest theater. A year later, the team offered two more adaptive productions, with more than 300 people attending February’s performance of “Beauty and the Beast” — the second-most attended sensory-friendly performance in the theater’s history.

July’s “The Story of the Nutcracker” garnered a smaller audience due to its location in the rehearsal theater, a space that holds far fewer people but is more accommodating to audience members using wheelchairs. The rehearsal space offers an intimate engagement with the performance, with no microphones, sound effects, spotlights, curtains, or barriers between the performers and the audience. Instead, the space allows for more transparency, safety, and interaction with the actors.

At both of the 2024 shows, the MSMT team took great care to adapt nearly all elements of the theater experience for their audiences, including:

• Handing out sensory-friendly fidget toys to audience members upon their arrival

• Eliminating strobe and flashing lights and dimming house lights

• Reducing elements of the show that might be considered scary or overwhelming, such as fights or arguments

• Offering a quiet room for anyone needing a break from the show

• Enabling performers to start and stop the production as needed

• Offering online and print guide materials to help theater-goers prepare for the show

• Communicating all changes to audiences before each performance via a handout and a verbal introduction

• Advertising productions at social service organizations, such as the Autism Society of Maine, Mobius, Adaptive Outdoor Education, and more

Clark and his team also take time before each play to introduce performers to the audience. Actors take the stage in their street clothes and allow audience members to touch their costumes, wigs, and props. One or two performers even pin curl their hair and don their wigs in front of audiences, which “really helps the audience accept the actor, rather than be scared of them,” Clark says.

These adaptive actions create a space for audiences with cognitive or physical disabilities to safely and comfortably connect with performances. And theater-goers respond with enthusiasm: At “The Story of the Nutcracker,” for example, audience members participated alongside actors, shouting “go, Nutcracker, go!” and “hip, hip, hooray!”

An Ever-Evolving Effort

The audience engagement and increasing attendance rates are evidence of MSMT’s work to help audiences engage with and learn more about musical theater. As much as audiences are learning from the performances, however, the MSMT team is learning from their audiences. “Every single time we do these performances, we learn something else,” says Clark.

Parents and group leaders are invited to share their thoughts, and many write letters to the MSMT team after performances. These letters offer important feedback that enables Clark and his team to constantly adapt and enhance their productions. “During this last performance, we learned that the kids love being able to make a choice, so we’ll be offering two options for fidget toys at upcoming productions,” says Clark.

The community has noted that the kids often feel overstimulated by crowded rooms, so the MSMT team has started leaving space between theater seats. They’ve also upgraded their sound equipment to better serve theater-goers with hearing loss and provided consistent messaging to avoid last-minute changes that might overwhelm audience members.

After one child noted that he was afraid of people in suits, Clark even stopped wearing a suit and tie to performances. “These are all things that I don’t think about as a human being,” Clark says. “But this group of kids goes through all this on a daily basis, so we need to adapt to them.”

Where Equity Meets Entertainment

For theater-goers and the Maine State Music Theatre team alike, the impact of these performances is profound. The theater itself has seen significant growth in attendance for sensory-friendly performances, and the actors find immense satisfaction and personal fulfillment in participating in these shows.

In fact, these performances are a favorite for most actors — particularly those who have family members with disabilities. “I’m thrilled by how excited our employees are about doing this,” Clark says. “For these performances, we have more help and interest than we need.”

Clark and his team continue to get positive feedback from community members, who recognize the value of having an inclusive space adapted just for them. These families come back year after year to see new productions and connect with other community members.

Because of the immense success of these sensory-friendly performances, Clark and his team are committed to learning new ways to adapt to different audiences. And their work marks a remarkable step on the path toward expanding equitable access to the arts.