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Writer and actor Neil Marcus reminded his audience at every performance of his play “Storm Reading”: “Disability is not a brave struggle or courage in the face of difficulties. Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”
Mr. Marcus, a patient with dystonia, a neurological condition that causes involuntary muscle contractions and affects speech, starred through sketches of conversations with grocery shoppers, doctors and people in the play, which ridiculously illuminates how he travels the world in a typical week. passers-by.
In 1988, when the show premiered at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, California, people often looked away from the disabled. “As kids, we were always taught that we don’t point, we don’t laugh, we just ignore them,” Rod Lathim, director of “Storm Reading” said in an interview.
In turn, “Storm Reading” encouraged audiences to laugh about their experience with Mr. Marcus.
“Neil invited and welcomed and in some cases asked people to look,” Mr. Lathim said. “And so he brought them into his reality, which is not a disability fact; it was a fact of his definition of life.”
The success and longevity of the game, which traveled all over the country until 1996, made Mr. It made Marcus one of the pioneers of the disability culture movement. He called his work the restoration of personality in a world determined to deprive people with disabilities of their autonomy.
Mr. Marcus died on November 17 at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 67 years old.
His sister, Kendra Marcus, said the cause was dystonia.
In 1987, Mr. Marcus and his brother Roger contacted Mr. Lathim, director of Access Theatre, a Santa Barbara company that regularly hosts plays featuring artists with disabilities. Neil Marcus sent samples of his writings and asked Mr. Lathim if the theater would be interested in adapting them.
Their speeches led to the birth of the “Storm Reading”. Mr. Marcus, his brother and Mr. Lathim worked together to draft the play, whose cast included Roger as the “Voice” (the role was later played by Matthew Ingersoll), who initially portrayed Neil’s thoughts. as well as a sign language translator.
The show was physically demanding for Mr. Marcus. But it also revived it.
“No drugs, no treatment, so I think it’s as powerful as the interaction between a live audience and an artist on stage,” Mr. Lathim said. “And it was amazing to watch Neil transform from that.”
Scenes from “Storm Reading” were filmed for NBC as part of 1989. television featurel, “From the Heart,” presented by actor Michael Douglas, is about disability. The actors reunited for a performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington in 2018.
Neil Marcus, the youngest of five children of public relations worker Wil Marcus and actress Lydia (Perera) Marcus, was born on January 3, 1954 in Scarsdale, New York. The family moved to Ojai, California when Neil was 6 years old.
Neil was 8 when he found out he had dystonia and attempted suicide at age 14 after a series of grueling surgeries, he said in 2006. oral history Interview for the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
But the counseling gave him confidence. He attended Ojai Valley School and was often seen zooming in on a golf cart. After graduating from high school in 1971, he went to Laos; On his return, he hitchhiked around the West Coast and eventually took classes at Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University, and elsewhere. He moved to Berkeley in 1980 and became active in the disability activist community there.
He explored art through various partnerships. He participated in “contact improvisation” performances with professional dancers, which avoided formal choreography and instead followed the seemingly insane movements of Mr. Marcus’ dystonia.
He also wrote extensively. She has worked with University of Michigan professor and activist Petra Kuppers on the Olimpias Performance Research Project, an artist collective that highlights artists with disabilities in performances and documentaries. Conversations on disability as art published In a 2009 article, “Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theater and Performance”. The duo also wrote a book called “Cripple Poetics: A Love Story” (2008), which features poetry and photography that highlight the physicality and emotionality of disability.
The Neil Marcus Papers, including his articles, poems, and correspondence, are held at the Bancroft Library.
In addition to his sister Kendra, Mr. Marcus is survived by another sister, Wendy Marcus, and brothers Roger and Russell.
In 2014, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History commissioned Mr. Marcus to write a poem dedicated to its online exhibition “EveryBody: A History of Injury in America”
The poem began:
“If there was a country called disabled, I would be there. / I live the culture of the disabled, I eat the disabled food, I make love with the disabled / I cry for the disabled, I climb the mountains of the disabled, I tell the stories of the disabled.”
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