ABSTRACT
Rarely on stage is sex depicted as a communal experience of discovery. Instead, it is often posited as private, sometimes completely unseen and only mentioned in passing, working to divorce the physical act of sex from the material dramaturgies present on stage. In Deaf West’s 2015 production of Spring Awakening, not only is sexual intercourse and sexual exploration laid bare in front of the audience, but it is communicated doubly through the action on stage and the ASL interpretation of the dialog and lyrics by the ensemble, comprised of deaf, disabled, and able-bodied actors. The multimodal ways of communicating and being beyond the normative as displayed throughout heightens the sense of community among both the actors engaging in the sexual act and those whose bodies are involved in sharing the lyrics depicting the intercourse. This chapter explores the sense of communal exploration created on stage by representing sex as a means of self-expression and discovery and the subsequent dramaturgical impact of holding both able-bodied and disabled performers as equally sexual beings. Pushing up against historical constructions of disabled people as either asexual or hypersexual with little nuance in between, it examines how Deaf West’s production of Spring Awakening serves as a liberating space wherein dis/ability and sexual exploration intermingle.
