A ‘Body’ of Work With a Broader Appeal

As a father, husband, Harvard graduate and lifelong wheelchair-user due to a congenital neuromuscular weakness similar to muscular dystrophy, I read Michael Phillips review of the new play “The Body of Bourne” at the Mark Taper Forum (“Not Letting Others’ Words Define Him,” June 8) with much eagerness. But after seeing the play myself, I’m saddened and disturbed by how badly Phillips missed the point and, more seriously, misled countless potential theatergoers.

Before the Taper’s production, I had heard of the play’s subject, Randolph Bourne, as the visionary author of “The Handicapped, By One of Them,” a groundbreaking essay published in the Atlantic Monthly early in the 20th century--a time when most people with disabilities were still shut away in institutions, attics and circus freak shows. Yet Bourne dared to “come out of the closet” and, furthermore, postulate that the disabled represent a minority group deserving of full inclusion. An idea that only became law in 1990, with passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Not surprisingly, the performance I attended was also attended by many other wheelchair-users. The Taper had recently quadrupled its wheelchair-accessible seating and, I’m told, renovated the backstage area to open it up to performers with disabilities, which was clear from the number of actors with obvious disabilities in the “Bourne” play.

But to my astonishment, a non-disabled man I know from a local independent bookstore happened to be there as well. When I expressed surprise at seeing him, he explained simply, “Oh, I’ve been a fan of Randolph Bourne for years.” Astounded further, I asked, “You mean you’d heard of him before?” “Yes,” he answered. “When I was in college, I loved his antiwar essays.”

After that, I realized what was unfolding. This show, which seamlessly entertains as it educates, resounds as a miraculous kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The vision it offers up of a fully inclusive society where people are valued for their ideas rather than their ethnicity, gender, social status or appearance becomes startlingly real when you consider how unlikely it is for a play of this type, a true story about the prejudices people with disabilities face, to be produced on a professional stage at all, using a multifaceted cast of disabled and non-disabled talent in a physical space modified with the express purpose of accommodating a diverse population.

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What Phillips failed to realize is that this is a first--an event that draws together not only narcissistic people with disabilities who want to see people like themselves on stage but pacifist-intellectuals, history buffs and plain old theatergoers. The significance of “The Body of Bourne” comes from the fact that it appeals to such a broad spectrum, and if Phillips had gotten it, I have no doubt that the show would continue to draw in people with a hodgepodge of reasons for coming together into a darkened hall on a lovely summer night.

Not that “Bourne” only works as a history-making event or a kind of performance art. It is a skillfully crafted, enjoyable and provocative play, in my opinion. What’s more, in its warm, stirring portrayal of one man’s struggle not just with external demons but with the way those demons can become internalized--his own struggle to come out of the closet--it resonates with universal appeal.