From Alison Kopit, Access Dramaturg

Hold Me in the Water is a subtler show than some of Ryan’s previous work. In the rehearsal room, we’ve sometimes used the word “elegant” to describe it. Whereas Ryan has often worked in vignettes, Hold Me is a single narrative arc, beginning to end. And because creative access works in concert with the personality of a play, we found an elegant tone for access to match its flow.

In his most recent work, Dark Disabled Stories, access was loud and gregarious; it was funny, transparent, and crisp. Dickie Hearts and Alejandra Ospina each provided their own components of access as characters in the show, as part of their performances. That said, we didn’t want the audience to think of that model of access as instructive. And so, in this show, we do not emulate that same aesthetic. Instead, we demonstrate another possibility — a different way of illuminating how access can go hand-in-hand with experimentation and creativity. We understood Dark Disabled Stories as a proof of concept — not a blueprint — of how to explore integrated access dramaturgically. So now, with Ryan on stage on his own, we’re taking another swing.

Here, Ryan imagines a world where disabled people, in the audience and on the stage, have an array of choices. We have continued our exploration of open access — access that is not an opt-in or opt-out, but rather a shared experience for everyone — through captioning and audio description and relaxed performance at every show. And we hope the increased availability of ASL-interpreted performances and masked performances gives more opportunities to facilitate the kinds of experiences that each person needs and desires. We continue reaching for a world where choices — and access — are abundant, and where more of us belong. 

And access goes beyond the audience. Access — as concept, as spark, as magic-maker — is baked into the themes of Hold Me in the Water in a way that it is so essential to the core of the work that you might not notice it sometimes. Similarly, when access is baked into a relationship, the quiet power of it can blow us away and make us retroactively feel a void as we reflect on past experiences. 

In disability culture, we often talk about access intimacy, as coined and described by Mia Mingus in her 2011 essay Access Intimacy: The Missing Link. Mingus writes: “Access intimacy is that elusive, hard-to-describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.” It can be so rare to find relationships where our needs are met naturally with expansiveness and care; where we don’t feel like a burden; where we might relax into a deep sense of safety. 

In the story you will experience, Ryan has deftly shown us one way this quiet power — elusive and hard-to-describe — can manifest in seductive and complex ways. Themes of access move through this piece as musical score, as the fog rolling in, and — yes — like water.

We hope you let yourself get swept away by the romance and buried in the granularity of this story. Notice what you relate to, and where the limits of your lived experience stop you from relating personally to the story Ryan tells. This is not a universal love story, but it is also not singular. As you recognize which parts resonate with you, also consider the aspects of tonight’s story that do not — Ryan exquisitely leads us to the chasm between our own experiences, and those beyond what we have lived. As Ryan tells his textured love story, he shows us what’s possible as a way of believing in more to come.