Transcript
Speaker: Music
Speaker: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Able Voices Podcast. I'm Dr. Rhoda Bernard, founding managing director of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education and the assistant chair of the Music Education Department at Berklee College of Music.
Speaker: And I am proud to present this podcast featuring disabled artists and arts educators. We are inviting artists with disabilities to be guest hosts with the Able Voices Podcast.
Speaker: Today, you'll meet our next guest host, Jillian Raquet. Jillian Raquet is a New York City-based nonprofit arts administrator, educator, and vocalist with more than a decade of experience in the nonprofit arts and cultural sector.
Speaker: And as an artist with low vision, Jillian is deeply committed to creating more inclusive pathways in the arts. Her work is closely closely connected to the Filamino M. D'Agostino-Greenberg Music School, a community music school for the blind and visually impaired, where she began as a student in 2012 while studying musical theater at Marymount Manhattan College.
Speaker: Through her work there, Jillian collaborates with fellow artists with vision loss and is dedicated to expanding meaningful opportunities for artists of all ages and abilities.
Speaker: Jillian's professional background includes positions at leading arts organizations such as TADA Youth Theater, Theater Development Fund, Philadelphia Theater Company, and A Class Act New York, where she developed expertise in arts education, outreach, and program development.
Speaker: Hi everyone, welcome to the Able Voices Podcast. My name is Jillian Riquet and I'm super excited to be your guest host for the next few episodes. If you didn't hear my introductory episode, I'm a New York based singer with low vision who works with the Philemon M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School, a community music school for the blind and visually impaired.
Speaker: I'd love to introduce you to my next guest, Keri Candeloro. Carrie Candeloro is a disabled theater worker currently positioned as the Access Associate at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Speaker: She is also a disability consultant with Disney Theatrical Group as well as the Walt Disney Company. In early 2024, Carrie began her tenure as co-chair for the Museum, Arts, and Culture Access Consortium.
Speaker: She has been professionally affiliated with Moulin Rouge! The Musical, New York Theatre Workshop, NYU's Galvaton School of Individualized Study, Columbia University, and the Lincoln Center Theatre Director's Lab.
Speaker: As a disability advocate, Kari has collaborated with various organizations to bring more visibility to the disabled community through social media. She has been a volunteer with YO Disabled and Proud California Foundation for Independent Living Centers, a collaborator with Open Style Lab, and an ambassador with Liberare, an accessible clothing brand.
Speaker: Keri is a graduate of the ADA Coordinator Training Program. Her story and work have been featured on websites like BuzzFeed, Westside Rag, and Freebird UK. Welcome Keri. So thrilled to have you joining us.
Speaker: Likewise. Happy to hang out with you today. So I wanted to start off with hearing your story as an artist. How did you get your start and how did you get to where you are today?
Speaker: Sure. i think I'd like to start off with the phrase that I commonly say, which is that ah even though I'm doing a lot of administrative work with access, I really do believe accessibility is an art.
Speaker: to be able to think creatively about accommodations and how to make sure that many communities can be welcomed into a space is an inherently creative act. So I'm very happy to be positioned as ah an accessibility artist in that kind of way. So I because i truly do believe that access it is in and of itself a creative act and a creative art.
Speaker: Sometimes you got to get a little scrappy with how we make things happens. So I guess I have always been disabled. I have a congenital limb difference. I truly don't know what it's like to not have three fingers on my left hand. I feel like if I were to have the full five, my hand would be truly, really heavy and like I wouldn't be able to like figure it out. It just doesn't compute with me.
Speaker: And then in my 20s, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness. And so I have the dual experience of both being disabled from birth and also acquiring a disability and what it's like to kind of move through that new normal. i started off my career at NYU's Gallatin School. I studied ah voice and theater. So technically, by trade, I'm a trained dialect coach.
Speaker: And as I moved through the world trying to make rent in New York, I used my resting nice face to do a lot of front of housework. So I worked in a lot of different theaters and institutions, welcoming people and doing all that kind of work. And I love that kind of work.
Speaker: And I was doing multiple jobs at once, as we all have to do. i think I had at max, I had like five or six jobs at one time. And then the pandemic hit while I was working on Broadway.
Speaker: we were like one of the the first folks that were shut down because we had a matinee on that Thursday. So we were the first show on Broadway to shut down that day. And then for the next couple weeks, I was like, all right, I guess we're not coming back in two weeks. What the heck am I going to do? This is the first time that all of my work can't happen. All of my work is in live arts.
Speaker: So I started thinking about things that I've been wanting to do my entire life and never had time to. And one of them was to get more in touch in the disability communities that I work in and wanted to be around in more.
Speaker: And so I did a lot of research. I kind of threw myself into watching Crip Camp more times than I care to admit and reading every single book I could get and just being like active on social media, did a lot of volunteering virtually at the time. And then I got all this knowledge and I came back to my my world of, you know, guest services in front of house being like, I love this, but I also have this new thing that I love.
Speaker: And so I started exploring different things there. I ah had some friends who recommended me to work at Disney for a project they were working on. And then in the roundabout way of things, someone was like, hey, you'd be really good at this job at Lincoln Center.
Speaker: And I was like, i I like Lincoln Center. I used to work there. And I looked at kind of like what I was doing with my life and what I wanted to do with my life. And I was looking at this job description and I was like, oh, wow, those are the same things.
Speaker: So I applied for the job and now I'm here and i get to do all these really wonderful things and I get to live my best Italian life in that I get to create community and make family everywhere I go. I'm an only child so I'm always down to build my family a lot bigger um and so I really love that I get to be able to work and collaborate in community with so many other people. It's great to be able to feel like we're all in this together to be the millennial high school musical quota that I am.
Speaker: I love hearing about that. And I love the idea of ah what you said about accessible accessibility being an art. It's so true. I love when this is why i love speaking with other disabled artists is it's it is so true. It it it is inherently almost, you know, I always think about when we're doing things with the music school and we're trying to figure out guiding, it is almost like a dance, you know, to get everyone on stage and and everything. So i I love that. And I love kind of hearing how you got to accessibility as your job.
Speaker: It's almost the dream. like but So i want to talk about your, you talked a little bit about your experiences as a person with a disability.
Speaker: But can you go into a little more detail about your experiences, both a person and an artist with a disability? Sure. I think that it is very interesting in my life that I have kind of, as I was saying, i have both acquired disability and general disability.
Speaker: And also for me, that manifests in that I have an apparent disability or a visible disability, and I have a not apparent disability or an invisible disability. And so the way that I get to navigate the world is really interesting.
Speaker: For the majority of my young life, I really wasn't able to mask or be able to like hide disability is something that like you know i I came into a room and was like, all right, you got to you got to know that i'm I have a disability.
Speaker: Although my best friend in high school sat on my left side of me for five weeks before she noticed. And I was like, how? You were literally right there. But in that kind of way, I spent my majority of my young years not being able to to hide anything. And then I got older and got this new chronic illness going on. And I was like, oh, I now have the ability to to mask for the first time and to really pick and choose who knows that part of me, which was a very interesting thing to know that like, you're going to see my hand regardless, but you don't have to know the other part of me. And so it's been really interesting to navigate the world in that new way.
Speaker: and it's, and I think it's been what now, 10, 12 years that I've had this chronic illness. And now I'm finally like, all right, I get to tell more people and feel more confident. It's something that It's MS, so multiple sclerosis, which is very like it can very dynamic disability. It's something that can change a lot in your life. And there's been a lot of research even in the past 10 years.
Speaker: And so for my first years that I was diagnosed, I wasn't really telling people because I didn't really know what my body would look like. I had to adjust to a whole new normal, new medications. I was taking injectables for years. I had to study abroad, bringing over five months of injectable medication to the UK, which was...
Speaker: Shout out to my neurologist at the time. We were on the phone with pharmacies for for hours one day to try to make that happen. Wow. and Yeah. And now I get take a pill, which is great. And so, like it's it's again, how much things have changed in my life at that time has been has been huge.
Speaker: Now, I think thinking about myself as a disabled like worker, somebody who was working in the access space making access is really interesting because um it disabled people kind of being in access roles is still kind of new.
Speaker: There were for many years, a lot of the people that were in these accessibility roles were primarily non-disabled people. And now with a lot of the new advent in accommodations and in the work that we're doing, there's just been a huge rise of ah people with disabilities in those roles.
Speaker: The common adage in our community is nothing about us without us. um And so it's been a really wonderful thing to be able to see. And also it's hard, you know, it's it's a really wonderfully empowering thing to know that the people that are making access for you who are making the accommodations happen are disabled themselves. And so they they understand what you're going through in a different way.
Speaker: But also, you know, if you're working a long day, and you're trying to make something accessible for somebody else, it can be exhausting on your body. You know, we're, you know, sometimes you're, you know, you know this, you're in, you know, rehearsals for like, you know, five straight hours and you're making accommodations happen. But also like, I got to sit down once in a while, I got to drink some water, especially, you know, when we're outside in the sun and in the heat, I got to have my fans on me, i got my little cooling vest, I got to really take care of myself. And so it's been,
Speaker: It's a really empowering thing to be able to know that the people that are taking care of you also understand what you're going through on a deeper level. And you also got to make sure you take care of yourself too. So yeah.
Speaker: Amazing. And um i I really commend you for ah feeling comfortable to talk about your invisible disability. I'm someone who most of the time, unless you see me reading something, you probably can't tell that I have low vision.
Speaker: And I still struggle, ah you know, what, 20 years later to bring it up at times. But it is always easier when we are, you know, open with, you know, what we need or or what's going on.
Speaker: So I really... And I loved what you said about the nothing, what was it was nothing about us without us. I i love that because it's it's so true.
Speaker: I've had a few teachers with, you know, visual impairment and it's so helpful to get their perspective versus, you know, someone who doesn't have that lived experience.
Speaker: Yeah. So I know that our listeners would love to hear about the arts education that you received. i know you talked a little bit about your time at and NYU. um Can you tell us how you studied the arts and how you continue learning today?
Speaker: Sure. Yes, as I mentioned, I went to NYU's School of Individualized Study, Gallatin School. When I was coming out of high school, I knew that I wanted to do theater and the arts, but I knew based on my body that I wasn't going to do well in a conservatory environment.
Speaker: especially as someone with a parent disability that I wasn't diagnosed yet with my MS. um And so I was like, okay, this is a conservatory environment is not the place for for someone like me, just like the way that I look, the way that the environment is, the way that my body ah needs to be able to take breaks and things like that. I just kind of knew the wasn't for me.
Speaker: And I really was interested in voice work and dialect work and any other school to be able to study like speech pathology, which is like voice studies and theater would be incredibly challenging. Those are two of the most time consuming majors that a human could ever have.
Speaker: And so I was at the time trying to figure out like, what do I double major? Do I major in minor? And then I went to Gallatin and they were like, You can just make up your own major. You can take the pieces of each of those studies that work for you and you can combine them together and do something like totally interdisciplinary. You can even like throw in linguistics and anthropology. And I was like, that, that's what I want.
Speaker: So i I ended up coming. Gallatin was like the the most obvious choice for me. It's not for everybody because you have to kind of make up your own track. So, you know, if you are somebody who likes to do, you know, 101, 201, that kind of thing, it's not for you. You got to figure out your own stuff. And in order to graduate, you have to do a two hour long, ah like conversation. It's basically like you're you're defending your thesis in undergrad.
Speaker: which is pretty wild to do, but I was very happy about that. And then i did a lot of learning on the ground. um I made sure that I was working in spaces that were art-centric. you know ah Working at New York Theatre Workshop, I was everything from ah from an usher to a house manager to box office, and so I really got to see a lot of pieces there.
Speaker: However, if someone asks me about my master's, I always like to say that working at Lincoln Center Theatre was my master's degree. I got to have a really wonderful experience working with the dramaturg at the time, Ann Cattaneo, who was a part of Lincoln Center Theater like from its founding.
Speaker: And she has read every single play, and she knows every single human, and was able to like give me so much knowledge about the industry ah in and of itself. And then at the time, I was also working as the costume assistant to Anne Roth, the costume designer. So my two Anne's gave me my master's my master's degree in theater.
Speaker: And so that was huge. in the access world. I did a lot of learning, as I mentioned, during the shutdown. um I read everything could get my hands on. um And then I recently completed the ADA coordinator training program, which was really huge.
Speaker: Again, access is very creative. I'm very much in the creative space, but in order to be able to have that creativity, I wanted to be able to take some time and think about like, okay, look, what is, I know that the sky's the limit, but what does the law say? What is the bare minimum?
Speaker: And so I was able to kind of get that training through the ADA coordinator program. And then I attend conferences. I just came back from the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability, the LEAD conference, which was really exciting. And so I get to learn from a lot of people around me.
Speaker: And yeah, i I get to learn every single day that I get to work. I learn something new about a community. i get to learn something new about technology that's coming up. And so I i love to be a lifelong student.
Speaker: That's awesome. And as someone who barely passed my voice and speech classes in my musical theater degree, I commend you greatly.
Speaker: And i think we've talked, you filled us in a lot about what's going on at Lincoln Center with you, but are there any exciting things coming up? Anything you're currently working on that you're super excited about?
Speaker: Oh boy. ah We just finished our Summer for the City ah Festival. It is a 10-week long festival where we've done over 250 different performances in that 10-week time, which was pretty wild. We offered everything from audio description. We did a really wonderful audio description for our premiere of our Contemporary Dance Festival. And so every single one of those five pieces had an audio described performance.
Speaker: We had a really wonderful series of disability artistry this summer. So we brought in our friends from the squeaky wheel, ah which is kind of like the the onion for disability. They had squeaky fest, which had a whole night of disabled comedians in honor of disability pride month.
Speaker: We had a really wonderful series that was curated by Jerron Herman, who is a performer and dancer, had a couple different series. and dance shows with there. And we also just have really done a lot of exciting tech with accessibility as well. So we had four different haptic nights where we brought in vibrational suits that transmit sound as vibrations so that guests can feel them and be able to ah feel the music in their body in a new way, which was really exciting. so So we just did all of that. And that just ended like last week. And then now we're getting ready for the fall. So our our fall season starts ah in September.
Speaker: We are really excited. We have a lot of really, again, a lot of really great dance performances coming up. We have our second contemporary dance festival happening in ah January.
Speaker: The one this summer focused on international artists. The one in January will focus on local artists and U.S.-based artists. And again, all those performances will have an audio described night, which is really exciting.
Speaker: We just have so many shows coming in our atrium space. We are doing another San Juan Hill Festival to celebrate the community that was ah predated Lincoln Center.
Speaker: um We've just done so many things as well in the intersection of arts and well-being. We're also starting to explore social prescription and social prescribing, which is really cool.
Speaker: And then on the Access team, we are starting up our our our programs as well. So we have our Moments program starting up again this fall, which offers free performances and events for people affected by dementia and their caregivers.
Speaker: Our Passport program, think, is launching like imminently, and that offers... free opportunities for people with disabilities and their families to be able to come to Lincoln Center.
Speaker: And we have our relaxed performances, which are also starting up again. so we we are really excited to be able to integrate access in so many things. And all of those shows that I just mentioned are either free or choose what you pay.
Speaker: which is a whole other level of access. So never a dull moment at Lincoln Center. We have a couple weeks of a break and we're excited to get going again. Yeah, no, i I get your email. So I already had a little bit of FOMO, but I definitely have FOMO. I'm gonna be checking my calendar and lining things up because that all sounds really, really cool. um I'm always forwarding your emails to everyone.
Speaker: I'd like to ask next, What advice would you give to a young artist with a disability? I would tell a young artist with a disability to look for their community and find their community.
Speaker: a formative moment for me was that when I was 15, I went into like a theater camp and did a mock audition for some Broadway bigwig. And I did my whole song and dance piece.
Speaker: And they looked at me and they said, i don't think you should be in this industry because of the way that you look. And for me, it I cried for hours and hours after that because there was nobody else at the time who looked like me in the industry.
Speaker: And so there was no one that I could look to as like, they've done it, I can do it too. And unfortunately, since then, we have so many disabled artists who have come up through the ranks and come up into this industry.
Speaker: We have Tony Award winner Ali Stroker, we have Jenna Bainbridge, we have Ryan Haddad, we have Daron Herman, we have all of these humans who have paved the way for us and have made this so wonderful and accessible.
Speaker: And it's about finding that community and meeting those heroes. They're all lovely people. Sometimes they say, don't meet your heroes. I'd recommend meeting those people. They're really great. So I am finding the people that will band together to make things happen.
Speaker: i think about my friends at Deaf Broadway who got together during the shutdown and started doing ah ASL performances of various shows on Zoom. And now they're at Lincoln Center and performing all these places.
Speaker: And because they were able to find that community and work together and make something happen. So I would definitely give the advice of you're not the only one out there. There are people out there who are going through this stuff just like you are.
Speaker: And to find your communities, I think for me, Being in this access work has allowed me to find people like you, Jillian, who like are doing this work and like we're doing the thing and like being able to feel like we're all kind of banding together in this to make stuff happen.
Speaker: It's really wonderful when we're able to create something bigger than ourselves and the kind of work that's happening in the arts and accessibility industry right now is is huge. So finding your community would be my advice.
Speaker: Absolutely. i i think um our last guest had a very similar answer. And I'm very excited because um Jenna Bainbridge is actually one of my upcoming guests. Yay!
Speaker: I love the how small our community is. It's very small. Very small. And I know after listening, our audience will want to get more information about you. Where can they follow you for, you know, more information on your work and anything upcoming? Sure. If you're interested in all things Lincoln Center, visit LincolnCenter.org. It's a wonderful place. You can find anything that's happening on campus and more. Our Lincoln Center Presents calendar is a really wonderful way to find out about all of those shows that I was just talking about that are free or choose what you pay.
Speaker: For me, I'm on Instagram. ah My username is Carrie underscore Can, C-A-N. And you can check me out there for anything that I'm doing.
Speaker: But yeah, those are those are the places. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was so fun. yeah likewise. Always joy to chat with you.
Speaker: Able Voices production of the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education, led by me, Dr. Rhoda Bernard, the founding managing director. It is produced by Daniel Martinez del Campo.
Speaker: The intro music is by Kai Levin, and our closing song is by Sebastian Batista. Kai and Sebastian are students in the arts education programs at the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
Speaker: If you would like to learn more about our work, find us online at berkeley.edu slash B-I-A-A-E or email us at B-I-A-A-E at berkeley, that's L-E-E dot E-D-U.
