[1] It is a derivative of the word "crip" and is used to call out certain casting practices in stage, TV drama and film production with particular focus on The Academy Awards[2][3] on screen and the portrayal of disabled icons such as King Richard III, Frida Kahlo or Joseph Merrick, or disabled fictional characters such as Tiny Tim, Meshak Gardiner or Nessarose on stage.
The academic discussion,[4] focuses on the extent of the practice and the nuances in its interpretation, which extends to exploring the differences between embodiment and impersonation, and how without the lived experience of disability changes the relationship between the audience and the production through ‘the cure of the curtain call’ (i.e. the moment when a non-disabled performer is revealed as such after portraying a disabled character).
This has led to instances such as disabled actors and writers calling on the UK TV and film industry at BAFTA to be more proactive.
[12] As a result, there are more TV, Film and stage productions are casting authentically or incidentally, with organisations like Netflix and BBC Studios forming a disabled writers partnership,[13] The Profile[14] was launched in 2021 which is casting resource created by the Royal National Theatre giving the industry access to professional disabled actor showcases.
Discovery, UKTV and Sky TV to obtain consistent diversity data on programmes they commission which includes disability representation onscreen.
There are parallels with movement for better representation for Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities which have led the way with colour-blind casting, that covers incidental portrayal.
And there is something a little comforting in knowing, as we watch the star jump around the red carpet, that none of it – the pain or negativity we still associate with disability – was real.
Perhaps as a society we see disability as a painful external extra rather than a proud, integral part of a person, and so it doesn't seem quite as insulting to have non-disabled actors don prosthetics or get up from a wheelchair when the director yells “cut”.
This can be seen in plays like The Metamorphosis where the changing into a bug, the main character has difficulty interfacing with a world that is neither designed for him or accepting of him, which are core to understanding what is referred to as the disability lived experience.
[29][30] The works of Samuel Beckett use literal disability as a metaphor to explore ideas of hopelessness, dependency and autonomy, but the characters such as Winnie and Willie in Happy Days, Pozzo and Estragon in Waiting for Godot, and Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell in Endgame, all have physical disability characteristics.
Because Ableism, negative unconscious biases and patronising attitudes towards disabled people in general exist, these add layers to an audience experience a non-disabled actor can’t access.
As Ford-Williams once said, “putting a disabled person on a stage is a postmodernist act in itself.” Academic and performer Jessie Parrot coined the phrase, “the cure of the curtain call,”[5] highlighting this change of relationship between a production and an audience going beyond the final bow and having a deeper impact beyond just one of entertainment.
This list focuses on live action productions and identifies what roles have been cast authentically in terms of disability characteristic, and which have been played by non-disabled actors.
[45] In royalty and nobility disabled people were visible, an example being such as Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, whom like Richard III had scoliosis.
A role that has been at the forefront of the Theatre and Disability movement is the Duke of Gloucester/The King in Shakespeare's play Richard III.
In a recent article in The Stage,[72] Josefa MacKinnon, creative programme developer for access and inclusion at the Royal Shakespeare Company, states that non-disabled actors playing the role as disabled should be a thing of the past.
The practicalities where all theoretical until in contrast the BBC's 2022 drama production Better, cast the disabled actor Zak Ford-Williams in a role where at first he had to mask his cerebral palsy, and then unmask it after his character Owen survives meningitis.