An Asian American man with tan skin, dark hair and grey goatee, and wearing glasses and a blue shirt, signs in ASL.
A clown in colorful clothing and angel wings crouches behind another clown who does not see him.
Ten men and women sit behind small tables with scripts in a semi-circle facing the audience.
Three women and one man holding white mobility canes find seats in two rows of folding chairs.
An audience stands while applauding a company of actors who stand facing them.

Accessible theater envisions a community of shared expression and experience that grows from the many ways we perceive the world.

ALL IN: The Festival of Accessible Theater is a project of Short Center Repertory, a theater company established in 1988 as a community outreach program of Developmental Disabilities Service Organization. Short Center Rep launched ALL IN in 2024 in collaboration with InnerVision Theater and Theater V58.

In addition to performances by the three companies, the festival features the Forum on Accessible Theater, an afternoon of discussion for theater practitioners, teachers, students, policymakers and service providers about the processes, techniques and considerations that go into presenting theater without barriers.

Short Center Repertory

DDSO established Short Center Repertory in 1988 as a community outreach project to train actors and perform in mainstream theaters and theater festivals. In 1995, Short Center Rep started including American Sign Language interpretation as an onstage theatrical element and as a means of reaching audiences within the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community.

Short Center Rep expanded its community outreach in 2005 by including actors who are Deaf or blind in inclusive, cross-disability productions, including an original production of Gilgamesh. In 2015, Short Center Rep began to offer theatrical clown technique training as a way to include adults on the autism spectrum; clown technique proved successful in opening creative communication because of its predominantly physical and somatic approach, bypassing mental blocks and self-censorship.

In 2018, longtime Short Center Rep actress Regina Brink, who is blind, directed a group of blind and low-vision actors in Short Center Rep’s production Inner Vision, an improvised clown performance that confronted misconceptions and misrepresentations about their community. During the pandemic, Short Center Rep shifted to online performances, presenting All Clowns Included and A Clown Odyssey on the Zoom platform. To date, Short Center Rep has presented more than 35 productions.

For its 2023-24 season, Short Center Rep collaborated with InnerVision Theater and Theater V58 on Climate Theater, a public outreach project that presented three original productions exploring the impacts of climate change on people who are neurodivergent, blind or low-vision, and Deaf or hard-of-hearing. Short Center Rep brought the three productions together for ALL IN: The Festival of Accessible Theater, which it launched in September 2024.

InnerVision Theater

The story of InnerVision Theater begins with Short Center Rep’s 2018 production of Inner Vision, in which longtime Short Center Rep actress Regina Brink directed performers who were blind or have low vision in an examination of misconceptions and misrepresentations about their community. Inspired by that experience, Brink and the actors organized as InnerVision Theater to continue presenting theater on themes related to blindness.

The company has presented Country of the Blind, an original live radio drama adapted from a short story by H.G. Wells, and, as part of Short Center Rep’s Climate Theater project, Eye of the Storm, an original drama that explored the impacts of emergency planning processes on people who are blind or have low vision. InnerVision Theater collaborated with Short Center Rep to launch ALL IN: The Festival of Accessible Theater in 2024.

Theater V58

Growing out of a 2019 production of The Vagina Monologues presented in American Sign Language, Theater V58 was organized in 2024 to create accessible theater in ASL for Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences in Northern California. In 2024, as part of Short Center Rep’s Climate Theater project, Theater V58 presented Ultimate Impact, an original cabaret-style production that examined the climate crisis using comedy, monologue, poetry and music performed in ASL. Theater V58 collaborated with Short Center Rep to launch ALL IN: The Festival of Accessible Theater in 2024. Learn more here.

An African American man in a bright blue checked shirt and long brown pants stands on a dark platform and signs in ASL. A man and woman seated on the floor in front of the platform look up at him.
A woman in a red skirt and white jacket looks down at a man in shorts and colorful shirt lying on his back at her feet. Behind them are two ASL interpreters dressed in black.
An actress with dark curly hair wearing a patterned shirt stands at a podium wearing oversized joke glasses with bulging eyes.
A man and woman wearing formal clothes, glasses and colorful insect wings embrace each other.
A man in a black shirt shouts as he grasps a man in a red tank top from behind.
Six actors standing side-by-side all point with outstretched arms to their right.
A golden Labrador guide dog named Taylor lies curled on the floor while wearing his harness.
A female clown dressed in purple and pink and with her arms outstretched to the sides balances on an imaginary tightrope.