On Saturday night, we took Charlie to see a student variety show at the college where I teach. I’ve taken Charlie to these shows before. We sit in the back—the auditorium’s not very large so every seat is good—and it’s a very relaxed and homey atmosphere. A lot of my students were in the production and they had given me an idea of some of the program: A couple of songs from Disney movies and Broadway musicals, and some improv acts.
The show was almost an hour and a half, with an intermission, and Charlie sat through it all. We got …read more

My college students are performing Cabaret and tonight Charlie and I went to see it. For the past month, Charlie has been doing something he has never done before, putting his hands over his ears when the radio is on in the car and when he hears human voices that are too loud or high-pitched. So I was not sure if bringing Charlie to a musical was the best idea.
We sat down in the back row and Charlie said hello to the athletics director (at my prompting) and then “no” to shaking hands with the chair of the history …read more

There’s been plenty of press for Autism: The Musical, which has been shown at a number of film festivals and will be shown on HBO tomorrow night, Tuesday, March 25th at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Here’s an interview with educator, performer, and acting coach Elaine Hall, the mother of Neal, one of the children in the show, and the founder of The Miracle Project, a program she created to get autistic kids involved in theater. The six-month process of those five children meeting, developing, and performing “Who Am I: A Time Traveler’s Tale” is recorded in Autism: The Musical, …read more

Some interesting reviews from Toronto of Autism: The Musical which (EyeWeekly notes) offers a “real life alternative to Rain Man.” And, while I’m on the subject, two more musicals: In Brick Township, NJ, a “rock opera,” Day After Day, that is about “the daily struggles the families of autistic children face”; it’s being performed this Friday and has also been performed eight times in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York over the course of two months in 2004.
On a slightly different note (sorry for the unintended pun), in New York there’s Next to Normal, the city’s “first mainstream …read more