{"id":230166,"date":"2017-11-07T08:15:03","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T16:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/?p=230166"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:22:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:22:05","slug":"dvp-interview-helen-walsh-and-gj-stillson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/11\/07\/dvp-interview-helen-walsh-and-gj-stillson\/","title":{"rendered":"DVP Interview: Helen Walsh and GJ Stillson MacDonnell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GJ Stillson\u00a0MacDonnell interviewed Helen Walsh for the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disability Visibility Project<\/span>\u00ae\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at StoryCorps San Francisco on December 4, 2014. In this clip, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Helen Walsh talks about her work in creating accessible theater as a disability rights advocate. Helen shares about a specific theater production with a Lesbian company that challenged stereotypes of the d\/Deaf community and sought to create dialogue between Lesbian, straight, disability, and non-disabled communities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1360\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F352409315&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=1360&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;dnt=1&#038;secret_token=s-pQlIe\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>Text Transcript:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instrumental Music \u2013 solo guitar, upbeat chords, soft, inviting pace<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>GJ Stillson MacDonnell:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Tell us a little bit about how the production of A Late Snow came to being and what it was about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So I was a part of a women&#8217;s theater company called Tribad Productions. I was probably 20, 21 at the time. I had been principal in many of the plays and had directed a few. And I had come across a play that had been done many times by many other theater companies. It was called The Late Snow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The whole play itself, The Late Snow, is about a relationship. It\u2019s about a big issue during a snowstorm that occurs. There\u2019s a lot of communication. So when I read the play I thought, this is a great play in terms of a focal point being communication.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instrumental \u2013 solo cello chords, dramatic staccato down and up strokes, feeling of anticipation<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> What I did is, at the time I was taking a class, um, it was an intermediate sign language class. So I decided to approach the producers and propose a show, and to also propose open casting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>GJ Stillson MacDonnell:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But you wound up having casts that had both &#8211;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I wound up casting that had deaf, hard of hearing and person with hidden disabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>GJ Stillson MacDonnell:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And then you had interpreters on stage\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And I also had interpreters on stage and I built a set, which was new to put the voice interpreter up from the stage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I remember though, in particular, one of the cast members who in the beginning when she was cast, she came up to me and she said \u2018I don\u2019t think I can do this because I\u2019m uncomfortable with people that are d\/Deaf.\u2019 She was the character that was the girlfriend and that woman was a d\/Deaf actor. But by the end of the show she had come into a new experience. Because at first she thought, it\u2019s not something that I\u2019m comfortable with, I\u2019m scared of doing this, I\u2019m not sure how to talk to d\/Deaf people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instrumental \u2013 repeat of solo cello chords, dramatic staccato down and up strokes, feeling of anticipation<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The audience at the end would be able to start understanding the beauty of ASL as a language instead of as something foreign to them or something that is not a language, something for \u2018those\u2019 people. In particular, at the end of the play, the voice interpreter does not voice interpret for her last lines.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And that particular play had half the audience of deaf, hard of hearing people coming to see it. There was gays, straight, our audience was diverse for a lesbian women&#8217;s show.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Helen Walsh:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It opened up conversation. One of the things the Disability Movement has been all about is pride. What we have been trying to communicate all these years is that what\u2019s important is to be a participant in your life and a participant in the community. I hope to the future now, which is about twenty years later that I did this, that all those people that were involved with the play have something that they took away from it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instrumental &#8211; solo piano music, serene melody implying a continued calm motion forward towards a distant arrival<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><b>Support Disability Media and Culture<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/donate\/\"><b>DONATE<\/b><\/a><b> to the Disability Visibility Project<\/b>\u00ae<b>!<\/b><\/p>\n<h3><b>Music Credits: <\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(\u201cNovember Mist\u201d and \u201c4 Point Path\u201d by Blue Dot Session and \u201cGlitter\u201d by Podington Bear) All songs and sound effects included under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sources: freemusicarchive.org <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Suggested Reference:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disability Visibility Project<\/span>\u00ae\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">12\/4\/14)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> DVP Interview:<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GJ Stillson\u00a0MacDonnell interviewed Helen Walsh. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Retrieved from:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-XSm\">https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-XSm<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Image Description:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A photo featuring Helen Walsh was taken on December 4, 2014: <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Close up portrait of Helen Walsh facing the camera. Helen has short brown hair that sticks up at the top, is wearing rounded, rectangular, black framed glasses, and appears to be white. Helen smiles slightly with teeth showing. Helen is wearing a black T-shirt with \u201cADA\u201d written in red. She also wears an open button down shirt that is dark blue.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Credits:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Produced for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 by Yosmay del Mazo and Alice Wong with interviews recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the story of our lives. For more:<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/exit.sc\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.storycorps.org\"> <b>www.storycorps.org<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/exit.sc\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.disabilityvisibilityproject.com\"> <b>www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For any questions, please refer to the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/about\/terms-of-useprivacy\/\"> <b>Terms of Use<\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GJ Stillson\u00a0MacDonnell interviewed Helen Walsh for the Disability Visibility Project\u00ae\u00a0at StoryCorps San Francisco on December 4, 2014. In this clip, Helen Walsh talks about her work in creating accessible theater &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/11\/07\/dvp-interview-helen-walsh-and-gj-stillson\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue Reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">DVP Interview: Helen Walsh and GJ Stillson MacDonnell<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[548705951],"tags":[5967,587152359,40576,562550991,587152360,14694],"class_list":["post-230166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvp-interviews","tag-advocacy","tag-ddeaf","tag-disability","tag-disabilityvisibilityproject","tag-lesbiancommunity","tag-theater","post-has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/sfb003022_sta1_edited.jpg?fit=3456%2C3825&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-XSm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}