An incredible theater experience: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, presented by handicapped amateur actors at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. We just walked back home on wet streets, amazed at what we’d seen–wheelchairs turned into magic chariots, actors who made us forget they were different at the same time that we never forgot their accomplishment. The troupe sang, danced and embodied the musical’s theme, “any dream will do.” Their disabilities included MS, Spina Bifida, deafness, cerebral palsy, blindness, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, and HIV/AIDS. During the unanimous standing, hollaring ovation they all seemed perfect, and so did we.
On the 16th Street Mall, a man crossed the street in the opposite direction from us. He seemed “normal” in all respects, except that I noticed his left hand hung limply, disabled. I felt an irrational impulse to thank him for something, to wish him a very good night.
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