The Special Olympics World Games has seen those with and without intellectual disabilities working together.
The chief executive of Special Olympics Great Britain has said she hopes the 2019 World Games will leave a lasting impression on employment practices in the UK for the intellectually disabled.
The Games in Abu Dhabi was driven by thousands of volunteers, including those with intellectual disabilities (ID), offering their time to help the competition run smoothly.
And many hope that one of the successes of the World Games will be to see that sort of integration in employment continue in the athletes’ home countries.
The Special Olympics describes an intellectual disability as “a term used when a person has certain limitations in cognitive functioning and skills, including communication, social and self-care skills”.
Michelle Carney, chief executive of Special Olympics GB, said she hopes the UK Government will recognise just how employable those with intellectual disabilities are after the World Games.
“There are a lot of misconceptions about what intellectual disability is,” Ms Carney told the Press Association.
“People fear what they don’t know, unless you’ve been in front of someone with an intellectual disability and realised you can have a really great conversation.
“We’ve got something tangible to go to the Government with and say: ‘Actually this group of people with a learning disability are the most under-represented group within employment, and how can we at Special Olympics help with that?’
“I think we’ve got some good case stories here to show and evidence the difference [the Special Olympics movement] makes.”
One of those examples is Ian Harper, a Special Olympics GB athlete whose many roles include working as a global messenger for Special Olympics Europe Eurasia, spreading the message of the movement.
“Ian is a really good example of what can happen as a direct result of Special Olympics,” said Carney.
“He’s here representing the whole of Europe and Eurasia and is changing minds and changing lives, influencing others to say ‘actually, with Special Olympics we can do anything. We deserve the same rights as everybody else’.”
The Games has seen people with and without intellectual disabilities working together, competing in unified sporting events as well as helping run the competition.
And the example that the Special Olympics movement has set is already seeing tangible results in employment.
A partner of the Special Olympics, food company Kerry Group, has a number of volunteers from Great Britain and Ireland attending the World Games, and has also started recruiting those with intellectual disabilities.
“Our partnership with Special Olympics has had a phenomenal impact on our colleagues and our organisation,” said Samantha Wothers, head of employee engagement at Kerry Foods.
“We’ve got colleagues who are now sharing personal stories, people who have got a sibling, a niece, a nephew, a family member, a friend who has an intellectual disability.
“Previously they have never spoken about that, and what Special Olympics has done is opened up those conversations in our business.”
And for the volunteers with intellectual disabilities at the Games, the message that they can be an effective part of the jobs market is vital.
“I do think it’s an important message,” said one intellectually disabled volunteer working as a sports official.
“Otherwise I believe that if people don’t understand the message it may send us back in time rather than forward in time.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Shaina Taub was in the audience at “Suffs,” her buzzy and timely new musical about women’s suffrage, when she spied something that delighted her.
It was intermission, and Taub, both creator and star, had been watching her understudy perform at a matinee preview last week. Suddenly, she saw audience members searching the Wikipedia pages of key figures portrayed in the show: women like Ida B. Wells, Inez Milholland and Alice Paul, who not only spearheaded the suffrage fight but also wrote the Equal Rights Amendment ( still not law, but that’s a whole other story).
“I was like, that’s my goal, exactly that!” Taub, who plays Paul, said from her dressing room later. “Do everything I can to make you fall in love with these women, root for them, care about them. So that was a really satisfying moment to witness.”
Satisfying but sobering, too. Fact is, few audience members know much about the American suffrage movement. So the all-female creative team behind “Suffs,” which had a high-profile off-Broadway run and opens Thursday on Broadway with extensive revisions, knows they’re starting from zero.
It’s an opportunity, says Taub, who studied social movements — but not suffrage — at New York University. But it’s also a huge challenge: How do you educate but also entertain?
One member of the “Suffs” team has an especially poignant connection to the material. That would be producer Hillary Clinton.
She was, of course, the first woman to win the U.S. presidential nomination of a major party, and the first to win the popular vote. But Clinton says she never studied the suffrage movement in school, even at Wellesley. Only later in life did she fill in the gap, including a visit as first lady to Seneca Falls, home to the first American women’s rights convention some 70 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the vote.
“I became very interested in women’s history through my own work, and writing and reading,” Clinton told The Associated Press. And so, seeing “Suffs” off-Broadway, “I was thrilled because it just helps to fill a big gap in our awareness of the long, many-decades struggle for suffrage.”
It was Taub who wrote Clinton, asking her to come on board. “I thought about it for a nanosecond,” Clinton says, “and decided absolutely, I wanted to help lift up this production.” A known theater lover, Clinton describes traveling often to New York as a college student and angling for discounts, often seeing only the second act, when she could get in for free. “For years, I’d only seen the second act of ‘Hair,’” she quips.
Clinton then reached out to Malala Yousafzai, whom Taub had also written about becoming a producer. As secretary of state, Clinton had gotten to know the Pakistani education activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman at age 15. Clinton wanted Yousafzai to know she was involved and hoped the Nobel Peace Prize winner would be, too.
“I’m thrilled," Clinton says of Yousafzai’s involvement, “because yes, this is an American story, but the pushback against women’s rights going on at this moment in history is global.”
Yousafzai had also seen the show, directed by Leigh Silverman, and loved it. She, too, has been a longtime fan of musicals, though she notes her acting career both began and ended with a school skit in Pakistan, playing a not-very-nice male boss. Her own education about suffrage was limited to “one or two pages in a history book that talked about the suffrage movement in the U.K.,” where she’d moved for medical treatment.
“I still had no idea about the U.S. side of the story,” Yousafzai told the AP. It was a struggle among conflicting personalities, and a clash over priorities between older and younger activists but also between white suffragists and those of color — something the show addresses with the searing “Wait My Turn,” sung by Nikki M. James as Wells, the Black activist and journalist.
“This musical has really helped me see activism from a different lens,” says Yousafzai. “I was able to take a deep breath and realize that yes, we’re all humans and it requires resilience and determination, conversation, open-mindedness … and along the way you need to show you're listening to the right perspectives and including everyone in your activism.”
When asked for feedback by the “Suffs" team, Yousafzai says she replied that she loved the show just as it was. (She paid a visit to the cast last month, and toured backstage.) Clinton, who has attended rehearsals, quips: “I sent notes, because I was told that’s what producers do.”
Clinton adds: “I love the changes. It takes a lot of work to get the storytelling right — to decide what should be sung versus spoken, how to make sure it’s not just telling a piece of history, but is entertaining.”
Indeed, the off-Broadway version was criticized by some as feeling too much like a history lesson. The new version feels faster and lighter, with a greater emphasis on humor — even in a show that details hunger strikes and forced feedings.
One moment where the humor shines through: a new song titled “Great American Bitch” that begins with a suffragist noting a man had called her, well, a bitch. The song reclaims the word with joy and laughter. Taub says this moment — and another where an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson (played by Grace McLean, in a cast that's all female or nonbinary) is burned — has been a hit with audiences.
“As much as the show has changed,” she says, “the spine of it is the same. A lot of what I got rid of was just like clearing brush.”
Most of the original cast has returned. Jenn Colella plays Carrie Chapman Catt, an old-guard suffragist who clashed with the younger Paul over tactics and timing. James returns as Wells, while Milholland, played by Phillipa Soo off-Broadway, is now played by Hannah Cruz.
Given its parallels to a certain Lin-Manuel Miranda blockbuster about the Founding Fathers, it’s perhaps not a surprise that the show has been dubbed “Hermilton” by some.
“I have to say,” Clinton says of Taub, “I think she’s doing for this part of American history what Lin did for our founders — making it alive, approachable, understandable. I’m hoping ‘Suffs’ has the same impact ‘Hamilton’ had.”
That may seem a tall order, but producers have been buoyed by audience reaction. “They’re laughing even more than we thought they would at the parts we think are funny, and cheering at other parts,” Clinton says. A particular cheer comes at the end, when Paul proposes the ERA. “A cast member said, ‘Who’d have ever thought the Equal Rights Amendment would get cheers in a Broadway theater?’” Clinton recalls.
One clear advantage the show surely has: timeliness. During the off-Broadway run, news emerged the Supreme Court was preparing to overturn Roe vs. Wade, fueling a palpable sense of urgency in the audience. The Broadway run begins as abortion rights are again in the news — and a key issue in the presidential election only months away.
Taub takes the long view. She’s been working on the show for a decade, and says something's always happening to make it timely.
“I think,” she muses, “it just shows the time is always right to learn about women’s history.”
This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Malala Yousafzai, right, and and Shaina Taub, creator and star of “Suffs” pose. Yousafzai and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are joining together as producers of the musical about the suffragist movement. (Jenny Anderson via AP)
This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Malala Yousafzai pointing to a sign for her off-Broadway musical “Suffs” in New York. Yousafzai and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are joining together as producers of the musical about the suffragist movement. (Jenny Anderson via AP)
This photo provided by Rubenstein shows Director Leigh Silverman talking with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a rehearsal for the off-Broadway musical “Suffs” in New York. Clinton and Shaina Taub are joining together as producers of the musical about the suffragist movement. (Jenny Anderson via AP)
