Ross Zentner
Mattie Olson, left, plays a girl on the autism spectrum processing the death of her older brother.
Children’s Theater of Madison’s current production, Mockingbird, begins with the funeral of a teenage boy who was killed in a school shooting. As friends and family dressed in black flood the stage in Overture’s Playhouse, they speak about Devon in low tones, offering their condolences to the boy’s father.
But then Devon’s younger sister, Caitlin, rushes in. Dressed in purple — her favorite color — the 11-year-old pushes past people, running through the crowd and refusing to engage. She doesn’t want to talk about her big brother’s death. She doesn’t want a hug. She doesn’t want to behave the way her father asks, or to describe how she feels. She wants to go home and curl up on the couch with her favorite purple fuzzy blanket. The death of a sibling is hard enough for a young person to process, but for Caitlin it’s doubly difficult because she is on the autism spectrum and for her, Devon was a bridge to the rest of the world.
Adapted from the National Book Award-winning young adult novel of the same name, Mockingbird is an exploration of what it means to be neuro-atypical. And for this production, the creative team felt it was imperative to cast a young actor on the autism spectrum to play this character, who processes information, emotions and sensory input very differently from her peers. As Mockingbird director Erica Berman points out in the program notes, “One in five Americans has a disability, however only 2% of the characters we see on stage and screen have disabilities. And 95% of characters with disabilities are portrayed by actors without disabilities.”
So CTM’s goals with this production are at least three-fold: to educate and encourage discussions among young people about those who are neuro-atypical; to broaden representation by putting neurodiverse actors onstage (and featuring the artwork of neurodiverse visual artists, who contributed to both the play’s set and the exhibit outside the theater); and to become more inclusive as a company by adapting their own rehearsal processes to accommodate cognitive and sensory differences. Judging from the positive conversations during the talkback, CTM appears to be completely successful on these counts.
The company also gets credit for producing a play that actively encourages empathy. As the title Mockingbird suggests, the script challenges viewers to follow Atticus Finch’s famous advice from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird — to really understand a person, you need to “climb into his skin and walk around in it.” As Caitlin struggles to understand how people are feeling using a chart of labeled facial expressions, her classmates, other adults and the audience try to imagine how overwhelming and confusing her world can be.
But strictly as a theater production, Mockingbird suffers from a flat script that slaps broad emotional labels on all the characters. Caitlin’s dad (Whitney Derendinger) is sad. Her teacher Mrs. Johnson (Liz Cassarino) is impatient. Speech pathologist Mrs. Brook (Samantha Newcomb) is kind. Our main character Caitlin (Mattie Olson) is confused. The other kids are either nice or mean. And in a story stuffed with issues, the 65-minute play doesn’t bother to unpack many of them.
There is also a notable lack of experience among the young performers: seven out of the 11 young people in the cast have never appeared onstage with CTM before. That makes for a great learning experience for the young actors, and a less polished production for audiences overall.
If you go, plan to build in extra time to take in the corresponding art exhibit and stay for the talkback. The complementary programming around the play makes for a richer experience.
