Blackface/Yellowface/*face

I'm going to go and see David Hwang's Yellow Face tonight. The reviews are mixed, but the play interests me -- both for itself (among other things, it takes on the question of what happens when a white actor is cast in an Asian role) and for the implications for identity politics.

I have many questions, none of which will be answered by the play itself, but the premise has got me thinking. For starters, I cannot imagine an off-Broadway play that engages with the problems of hiring non-disabled actors to play disabled roles. I can't imagine this as a controversy that would pull the kind of financial backing to put on a production; I don't see it as something that would attract an audience. I mean, other than other crips and our allies, who cares? What do they need to know in order to be able to care?

I mean, for that kind of thing to happen, we'd have to have a large scale awareness of disability culture (and, of course, that presumes an acceptance of the notions that disability is an identity possibility, that there can be disability culture, and that disability art is worthwhile). It would involve a mass change in public consciousness. No longer would disability be read as a marginal pathology that afflicts some, but not, thank god, me; disability would instead be as identifiable a part of contemporary society as issues of gender, race, sexuality, and class. I say "identifiable," as opposed to "accepted," because you can have widespread awareness that an issue exists, even if not many are accepting any of the premises (gay marriage, for example).

Some other things come up. Every year, I read reports of a frat party gone bad -- someone claims free speech as a justification for dressing up in black face and going to the party. Most often, horrible pictures are circulated, there's some outcry, and then coverage disappears. Presumably, these things get worked out locally.

I have mixed feelings about this as a disability thing. On the one hand, I am glad that there is no such disability equivalent. The history and cultural attitudes invoked by blackface are repugnant; I have no wish to be confronted by the disability equivalent. And yet, I feel that, as a culture, we should investigate what it means to dress up as disabled.

Though it might be possible to do so with individual impairments, disability as a whole cannot be reduced to a regularly reproducible set of elements like blackface: artificially blackened skin (to black not brown), the lips, and eyes. No idea what I mean? Won't link to anything, but this Google search will give you some clue. And even if you could decide upon which elements you were going to make into your "disability face," your costume still would not be successful. Despite years of discrimination and oppression and despite a history that is as appalling as the histories of other minoritized groups, there is no performing arts context for disability face. And even though exaggeration of certain physical aspects of certain impairments, there (perhaps fortunately) has not been a systematic reworking of these localized moments into a "tradition." Any attempt at disability face would look like a party costume. And that's kind of the impression I get when I see non-disabled types acting disabled roles.

So, over to you. What would disability face look like? Would you be able to distinguish disability face from disability drag? What would disability drag look like (and here I really do mean *drag,* as opposed to *dress up*). Could PWD with one impairment drag another? Could you drag your own impairment? Or would it have to be non-disabled people dragging disability? When does drag become disability face?

Could there really be a set of performances of disability in which we can separate an actor dressing up as disabled in order to create, with some degree of verisimilitude, a disabled role (because you *know* there are no disabled actors who can do this kind of stuff) from someone in disability face? Would it have to be literally a "face" to be disability face?

BTW: I'm using the phrase "disability face" because there really isn't a word for it. At this point, though, I'd like to offer "spack face" and "spacking up" as possible alternatives.