Special Gifts Theatre (SGT) is a non-profit organization that empowers individuals with disabilities to participate in theatre productions. I volunteer with SGT as a Peer Mentor. As a Peer Mentor I support an assigned actor through every stage of the rehearsal and performance process: classroom lessons, choreography classes, production lessons, character development, etc. The actors I have supported have always been non-speaking, which creates another layer to the rehearsal for us. We work together to program lines into communication devices, and rehearse our lines in a different way. 

For the final performances, Peer Mentors generally wear all black…but that’s not how it ended playing out for me last year. The actress I was supporting for Alice in Wonderland did not want any part in wearing her caterpillar (and later on butterfly) costume. So we came up with a compromise: she would wear the caterpillar shirt and pants, and I would wear the hot pink antenna and blue wings. For our second performance, we “overnighted” a second pair of pink antennas, so theoretically both the actress and I could wear that costume piece. As we stepped out from the wings of the stage to enter our first scene, the actress decided she would not be wearing her antennas, and instead, I would be wearing both. The same actress and I are together again for this year’s musical, The Wizard of Oz, and only time will tell how many costume pieces will be pawned off to me.