More than a lucky break: disability, ambition, and a shifting theatre climate

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Shifting diversity strategy has prompted new urgency to increase engagement with disabled people in the theatre industry and added to complexity in seeking and measuring authenticity in theatre practice. Drawing on an interpretative phenomenological analysis study with actors who self-define as disabled people, this article expands on how intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences in theatre influence personal ambitions within, and for, the industry. It considers how actors interpret their career position and future, while also weighing authenticity in practice and whether progress made in removing disabling barriers in theatre can be trusted as long-term. This article also questions if a pause in business during the COVID-19 pandemic only added to precarity in the industry or modelled a necessary opportunity for increased disability engagement. The UK Disability Arts Alliance and its national #WeShallNotBeRemoved campaign are acknowledged as valuable and actors’ lived experiences are shared as a route to more nuanced understanding of what is needed to move towards the sector’s equitable future.