Break A Leg! Disability in the Arts
Break A Leg! Disability in the Arts
Producing Theatre That Scares You with Michael Patrick Thornton
Michael Patrick Thornton is the co-founder and artistic director of Chicago's The Gift Theatre. He joined Nicole to talk about producing, his career on stage and television, casting, representation, the “cripple card,” traveling abroad in a wheelchair, and more!
The Gift Theatre online:
Website: https://thegifttheatre.org/
Instagram: @thegifttheatre
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGiftTheatre/
Episode Transcript: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1751649/8977842
Produced by Scott MacDonald
Artwork by Sasha & Alexander Schwartz
https://breakalegpod.buzzsprout.com/
Welcome to Break A Leg! A podcast that explores the relationship between disability and the arts. I'm your host, Nicole Zimmerer, and on today's episode our guest is Michael Patrick Thornton. Mike is the co-founder and artistic director of Chicago's The Gift Theatre. He's an actor, a writer, an improviser and a director. And let me see, and he appears frequently on TV and stage and he also happens to be my mentor, my "Yoda," as I like to say, Hi, Mike.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Hi, Nicole.
Nicole Zimmerer:Thank you for showing up.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Oh, thank you. Thanks for inviting me.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah, of course. Um, also fun fact, you're the first guest that we have on the show that identifies as a male.
Michael Patrick Thornton:As a male?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yes.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Got it. Well.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah, you're the first dude.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Oh well thank you very much.
Nicole Zimmerer:Okay, the first segment, as always, is Spilling the Disabili-Tea, where we talk about a historical or current event going on in the disabled community. And today's Disabili-Tea is the fact that July is Disability Pride Month. So if you're not listening to this in July, um, I hope you hugged a cripple in July, that would have been nice. Don't give us money because the government wants us to be poor. And put it on your calendar for next year. Mike, what are you doing for Disability Pride Month? Anything?
Michael Patrick Thornton:Talking to you right now.
Nicole Zimmerer:That's, that's fair. That's fair.
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Laughs*
Nicole Zimmerer:That's very fair. Um, you should be proud.
Michael Patrick Thornton:I think I'm trying to... I think my default position when I see things that are very ableist is to try to, um, you know, foment the spirit of, you know, hearing each other and, you know, bringing people closer together. And I think, I think there's just been some things this month where I'm like, "You know what? It is Disability Pride Month, so maybe I'm gonna throw a few more uppercuts than I usually would," you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:So I think that's how I'm, that's how I'm celebrating is I'm not just boxing, you know, in my little, my 100 pound, my 100 pound heavy bag in my room, I'm throwing some punches in the in the virtual sphere as well. So.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah, punch some ableists on the internet. That's what we we all need. That's what the, that's what the universe needs.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Haha, yeah, right.
Nicole Zimmerer:So that is Spilling the Disabili-Tea. And for anybody wondering about last episode's Disabili-Tea, concerning the bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate, there is no update because government is slow. And we will keep you updated once we hear anything. So yeah. Let's go USA! Mike why don't we just jump right into it? Uh, who are you? What are you doing? What's your damage? Why am I talking to you right now?
Michael Patrick Thornton:Haha... Um, who am I? Well that's a big question. I mean, your intro said quite a bit. I'm a Chicagoan, born and raised in Chicago. I'm from a neighborhood called Jefferson Park, which is a pretty city-worker neighborhood on Chicago's northwest side. And a neighborhood that never really had a professional arts organization. So after I left college, I went to the University of Iowa, we decided to put a theater in our neighborhood. And that theater is called The Gift. This year is its 20th anniversary on December 6, will be our our 20th anniversary to the day when we opened up our first show. And I am a C4/5 incomplete quadriplegic. I had a spinal stroke on the day of the St. Patrick's Day Parade in 2003, and decided that spinal strokes are just so much fun that I had another one about three weeks later. I woke up to a priest administering my last rites, had to do a year of speech therapy, you know, learn how to breathe, talk again. I use a manual wheelchair for most of my transportation. I can stand in a walker and shuffle a little bit. But for the most part, it's a TiLite Aero T is the chariot of choice these days. And yeah, I do, I started off doing a lot of theatre in Chicago and went through Second City and Steppenwolf. And then about 12 years ago started transitioning into TV and film, and have been lucky to work fairly consistently in that medium ever since.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah, yeah. And you and I met, um, eight years ago. Oh my god.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Wow.
Nicole Zimmerer:I'm sorry. I'm just... passage of time. Um, yeah. Mike is my Yoda. Mike was the first adult that I met who was disabled who did theatre. Mike is also the person, whenever I have a crisis of faith, I guess you could say, to like be like, "Shut up and just do it."
Michael Patrick Thornton:Haha, I hope that's not always my advice. But no, I'm honored to get those calls.
Nicole Zimmerer:So The Gift and it's 20th anniversary. Wow. That's, that's amazing. That's something, 20 years.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Well, what's so crazy about it is, it'd be hard for any arts organization last 20 years, but then throw a few factors at it. So in The Gift's case, one, you're building a theater, you're not just renting out spaces. It's a lot easier, I think, sometimes to survive when you're itinerant, because you're not beholden to a production schedule, really. So we laid our roots, and actually, you know, leased the space. So that's one. Two, we leased it in a neighborhood that was not known as a kind of artistic, you know,"hotbed." It's kind of a neighborhood you drive past on the way to the, uh, to the airport. So that was kind of the second challenge. The third challenge is that The Gift storefront is 45 seats maximum. And the ninth challenge, fifth challenge, whatever challenge we're up to at this point, is that we made the decision in 2005 that we would join Actors Equity, and that we would be a union theater. Because we had seen examples of a lot of our friends who had started theatre companies and they were kick-ass artists, and they would, you know, get noticed from doing a play with their friends at the theater they started. And then by virtue of being noticed, they would get cast at a larger theater around town, they would get their Equity card, and then by virtue of them getting their Equity card, they couldn't even go return and act at the theater that they had helped found, because that theater was still non-Equity.
Nicole Zimmerer:Wow.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah. And that was kind of an early Cassandra warning, and we paid attention. And we said, "Okay, look, this is going to be a reckoning someday. So why don't we just throw our arms around the challenge now?" And I'm stunned that we did it. I'm stunned that it didn't bankrupt us. We went from a company that scratched out our first production budget on the back of a bar napkin and it was for 420 bucks. And, you know, now that's what we spend on like water for a show. And The Gift is, you know, an annual about a half-a-million dollar organization, and the fact that it was able to kind of do all those things well, and then finally, for most of our production history to be premieres, to be Chicago, Midwest, and world premieres. It's nothing short of a miracle.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah. Wow. I didn't know, well I knew some of that, but I didn't know all of that. What are the factors that helped you throughout The Gift's run to get you to that point, of where you are now?
Michael Patrick Thornton:I think one, we never presumed that we knew more than our audience. We never talked down to them. We always, we assumed that they had gone through commensurate amounts of heartbreak and shit that we'd gone through. We also program plays that scared us, you know, we didn't really know how we would pull off any of those plays. I mean, you're talking over 70 full productions at this point. And every single one of them was kind of an enigma when we encountered it. And I think that's the main thing I tell people when they're starting a theatre company or thinking about starting a theatre company is, every year, you're gonna come across a play that you read, and you're gonna be able to envision who could play which role from your ensemble, who would direct the hell out of it, which designers would be fantastic for it, and you might get a sense of how your audience would react to it. And what I always say to them is, it's absolutely critical that you find the courage to not do that play. Let another company for whom that play is a challenge do that play. What you should be doing is the play that you have no idea who's gonna play which role, it could go five different ways, and three different of your directors would take it, you know, three different directions as well. You know, you want the kind of shaggy dog, you want the, you want to choose the plays that you can't stop thinking about. And the ones that are, are really inconvenient actually, for more than one reason. Because if... it's too hard of a sector, that we're in, it's too hard of a business. A lot of theaters go under. People change over time. And if we're gonna go down, if the ship's gonna go down, my feeling has always been like,"Well, then let's fucking go down doing something that we fell in love with. And that we supported whole-heartedly. And didn't know if it was gonna work." As opposed to going down because we, you know, "We played it safe. We played it conservative. We did a classic in a way that was unimaginative. And you know what, no one came and saw it. And we bled out financially. And then we went under." Like, let's go with option A.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And be able to hold our heads up high.
Nicole Zimmerer:Let's play the violins while this ship is sinking.
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Laughs*
Nicole Zimmerer:Um, yeah!
Michael Patrick Thornton:That's right.
Nicole Zimmerer:That... I would, I would rather go with option A as well. Not that I, well, I could start a theatre company. But I took, I took a course in grad school that was like planning a season, basically, as a producer, how would you plan a season and I was like, "Oh!" There is a lot like, a lot more math than I was expecting, planning a season. Because you have to plan the money, and then you have to plan...
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:There's a lot more math. And there's, I mean, there's no hard and fast rule, I would say. And I would like to think that we've experimented with almost any, every kind of combination one could experiment with three slots. You know, we've done a season of all world premieres. We've done a season with two, like a classic, a Shakespeare, and then a world premiere. We've done a Midwest, Chicago, world premiere version, like we've mixed it up as much as possible. The only thing I know, and can say with confidence, is that doing a season in an Equity storefront theater of three world premieres is really fucking hard. Because you don't have, you don't have the extra marketing dollars to tell the story about these plays that no one's ever heard of.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:You know, and also new plays, as you well know Nicole, need a little more time and attention, you know.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And sometimes you don't know what they even are, until previews. And so, you know, we like to give our world premieres two weekends of previews. We like, you know, we used to be doing eight weeks of rehearsal, we weren't going into tech until the ninth week.
Nicole Zimmerer:Wow.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Is how we functioned for about 15 years. And then we realized,"Okay, we're gonna go bankrupt, if we keep doing this," we shorten the rehearsal process. But, you know, the one kind of default model that sort of works is like, leading off with something that has some name recognition. And then you, then you kind of can sneak your, your batshit crazy wild-card slot into slot three, because hopefully you're kind of accumulating a little bit of revenue.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:You're gonna end your season on an okay note, but you know, it's all alchemy. So much effects... so much is out of your control, you're choosing seasons a year out, and the world changes. As we've all just gone through with the pandemic. And plays that seemed to be about one thing are inescapably about another, you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Wow. Okay, I'm just processing. Oh, it's wild. It's wild. What have you learned being an artistic director for The Gift? What have you learned about yourself? And, you know, how have you expanded personally?
Michael Patrick Thornton:I think, you know, one of the biggest lessons I've learned is giving yourself the gift of time to... to kind of roll away and take a helicopter's view of what the operations are and what's being iterated, is really important. And unfortunately, you know, that was a lesson that was learned too late. You know, like for, I don't know, call it 12 years of The Gift's, you know, 19, 20... look, we had ensemble members who, uh, went to Ivy League schools and ensemble members who barely squeaked through high school. We had ensemble members who grew up in, you know, palatial estates with, you know, horse barns and we had ensemble members who grew up in trailer parks, you know. We have an incomplete quadriplegic as the artist director, we have a legally blind ensemble member, who's one of the most stunning actors, I think, in the country, Jay Worthington. So, on so many levels of diversity, we were executing, I think, beautifully. We really fucking sucked at racial diversity. It was, it was a way-too-white theater for way too long. And, you know, in kind of having this year of pause and this racial reckoning the country's going through, you know, one gift in all the horror is to kind of reevaluate, you know, what could have gone better, you know. And I think like, whether you're at a storefront theater with a$500,000 budget, or you're at a multimillion dollar arts complex, you know, it's always a fucking rat race, you're always wearing multiple hats, and so like the big lesson, to answer your question, is that it's really incumbent upon us, as individual artists not beholden to an organization, or people who run an organization, to intentionally carve out time in our schedules to step on the brakes, take an overview, and look what's being iterated. You know, for years I got, I was pitched plays by the same half-dozen agents in New York and LA, and never thought to think, "Well, who are their clients?" You know? And then, you come-to and it's 15 years, and you're like, "Well look, we've produced a lot of great plays, and we've produced a lot of world premieres, and we've been a welcome home for women playwrights especially. But we really sucked at this, you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:So taking the time, so taking the time to realize what stories we're telling, and what stories we've neglected, I think, has been a big lesson. Another big lesson, I think, is that like, you know, we did a play called Suicide Incorporated, and it was an excruciating show to do. It was written by our ensemble member Andrew Hinderaker. And a gentleman came to see the show who was homeless, essentially, had lost his job, had lost everything, you know, his loved one's story weirdly resembled the character I played. He went into a shelter because he was thinking of killing himself. And they said, "Well, what do you love? You know, what do you remember loving about your former life?" And he said, "You know, I used to love plays. I loved seeing plays." And they were like, "Here's 20 bucks, you're in Chicago, go get a ticket to a play." And somehow, haha, out of all the options he had, he found a storefront theater run out of a former shoe store in the corner of Chicago, called The Gift. And came in to see Suicide Incorporated, wrote us a letter saying that that play saved his life. And now he's a counselor, you know, and that was 10 years ago, 11 years ago. You know, I think it's, it's really easy sometimes to get caught up in a lot of the bullshit. You know, if you're running a theater, it's, you know, you're just trying to keep the fucking doors open most days. But if you're an individual artist, you know, if you're playwright, you're trying to... "Who's ever gonna do my play?" If you're an actor, "Did I get the part?" You know. And I think it's also really easy to forget sometimes that like, at our best, I think we're sort of in the missionary business. I think we're sort of trying to save people. I think what we are is we're participating in like, a real ancient ritual, whether it used to be scratched out on cave walls in animal blood, of trying to wrestle with the same huge questions of like, "Who are we? Where do we come from? Is there a god? How should we conduct ourselves individually and as a member of a society? What happens when we die?" You know, like, those are the, those are the big ones we've been wrestling with forever. And I think, I think plays are the Trojan horse which usher those questions into the public space of the theatre. And I think it's really easy in our business, which is relentlessly and mercilessly... can beat you down. I think it's really easy to forget sometimes just how powerful we are, and just how powerful the art form with which we're trafficking is, when it's aligned properly.
Nicole Zimmerer:I needed a moment. Give me a... *deep breath* Mike, how do you do this?
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Laughs*
Nicole Zimmerer:'Cause I am having a crisis, but I don't want to talk about it right now. But that helps.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:I'm always having crisis, what else is new?
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Laughs*
Nicole Zimmerer:Um, jeez. I mean, I've heard like "theatre can save people's lives," but it's mostly like, theatre saved my life, as a playwright. Like it gave me something to do. But like, you getting a letter from this man who saw your show... That's powerful stuff. You know? That really like...
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:You think about that on bad days, and you you power on through. Um, yeah, yikes. Not "yikes" in like a bad"yikes," but like a...
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:Wow, we really are, you know... Even though it's a lot of bullshit in the industry (because it's a lot of bullshit in the industry), there are moments like that, that is like a gem of humanity. Um, you know, I need a second to think of another question. Um!
Michael Patrick Thornton:Haha, yeah, you got me in tears a little bit, but...
Nicole Zimmerer:*Deep breath* Yeah. So how was, um... How did the pandemic affect The Gift during the past year?
Michael Patrick Thornton:For, COVID for the gift was a wild ride, you know. Everybody has a friend at the CDC these days, but we actually do. And there's a fantastic woman, brilliant public health thinker, and... Dr. Christa-Marie Singleton. And, you know, Christa was coming to The Gift for years, and it was only like after the sixth show where I realized that she was flying back and forth from Atlanta, for each show.
Nicole Zimmerer:Oh my god.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And she was flying back and forth, because she worked for the CDC. And Crista used to be in charge of the public health policy for the city of Baltimore. And so anyway, my point is that, when this shit started hitting the fan, you know, I would call her and I would say, you know,"Look, we, you know, you've been to our theater, it's small. What are we... what are our responsibilities?" And it went from, "Look, as long as people aren't packed in your lobby, and you can kind of stagger that a bit. And as long as you're kind of, you know, wiping down the theater and disinfecting the bathrooms and the, you know, commonly-touched places. It should be fine." It went from that to, "You need to shut the fuck down," in like 24 hours--
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--is how fast the messaging was changing and... and not to throw them under the, the CDC under the bus like, they are scientists and they're adjusting their recommendations as the data comes in. But we were six weeks into what was supposed to be an eight week run of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman. And we were... I forget if we shut down on a Saturday or a Sunday, but they, they knew. I mean, one of the actors, their partner worked in a building where on three floors above and across the building, someone tested positive, so it was just a matter of time before it was like we wouldn't responsibly be able to have people do the show anymore. And so what we did is, you know, we shut that down, and we essentially mothballed the organization. We only have one full-time staff member (and it's not me), and they went on unemployment. And what we did creatively is we set up a Tuesday night Zoom hangout, where people could just drop in whenever and say hi, which was super cool because it kind of activated the out-of-towner Gifters, we have people who live in LA and New York and Austin and Frankfurt and... so people were able to pop in and and see other ensemble members that they just don't get to hang out with on a regular basis. And then I returned to my first love which is writing and I wrote a 10 episode radio drama for The Gift called Mud City. Which is this you know, kind of noir-style detective story. So we started recording that and, and we're returning to recording that in a couple weeks and hopefully release that this fall.
Nicole Zimmerer:Okay, good,'cause I've been waiting for it. Ever since you told me about it, it's been in the back of my mind like, "When is it coming out? When is it coming out?" Because I'm a sucker for a noir detective story. I really am.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Well you have three styles. You have 1930s-40s Chicago noir detective hard-boiled; you have 1840s Wild West; and then there's 1960s Hollywood. And what was so wild about that project was that, and we haven't finished it but, you know, when we were first starting and first, A, workshopping it and, B, recording it, is we made a decision early on to turn off our cameras. And so this piece that was born out of a once in a lifetime, hopefully, experience, a pandemic, which forced us all into a state of isolation, you know, it was born out of that loneliness and it was born out of that yearning to connect, and missing people. And we recorded it in the way in which the piece was generated, right? People were, you know, by themselves and alone and isolated, and not looking at each other. And so, as actors I think it was beautiful for the ensemble because they've done so many plays with each other, and to take away the visual component of our art form, and for them to simply have to react to what they're hearing in the voice of their fellow ensemble member was so intimate, and intimacy is sort of the aesthetic-north-star of The Gift as it is anyway. So this thing, this story that is, you know, frivolous and kind of whimsical in a very strange way, I think is going to be a perfect ambassador for what we do.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yes. That sounds amazing. Intimacy is also I think, one of the greatest gifts that theatre can give you, because I've had very intimate moments with complete strangers in the theatre. And I think, you know, I love... do I love big shows or was I just raised with big shows? That's the question I'm constantly asking myself now. But I would much rather be in like a 45 seat theater than like, you know, a Broadway house. Because you know, you can just connect with humans better. Better?
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:I don't know. Can I ask what was, what was your moment? What has been the most important moment for you, a moment in theatre where you're like, "This is why I do what I do," where you were seeing a show, and you were like, "Oh, I can make a career out of this."
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Deep breath* What was the moment that convinced me that I could do this? Or what was the moment in my career that was like, the turning point?
Nicole Zimmerer:Um, let's do the turning point, I'm much more interested in that.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Haha. You know, I think there were two. You know, right before I had my spinal strokes, I was in Chicago for about two years, you know, and I had done a show at Second City and I had gone through the school at Steppenwolf, which is a very prestigious 10 week training program at which I've taught for a decade now. And had got my Equity card at Northlight Theatre, things are happening. And then, you know, boom. The rug gets pulled out from you and this medical fluke happens. And so getting back on stage that first time post, post, you know,"injury" is probably the wrong word, but... I did a play called The Good Thief by Conor McPherson, which is a one person show. And, you know, it's important to kind of recognize that there was a good year after I got sick where, you know, my diaphragm wasn't getting the message from my spinal cord,"Hey, dude, you need to take a breath now because we don't have any oxygen." So I would start a sentence and like, I would just pass out!
Nicole Zimmerer:*Laughs*
Michael Patrick Thornton:You know? And so like a lot of speech therapy was like learning like, how to breathe and talk again. That's something that like, it's a skill that if I get, you know, too animated or excited still goes out the window, you know? And so, the point being that the idea of getting on stage post-injury in a one hour and five, six minute monologue was crazy. But I did it. And opening night, I actually walked out in my walker and sat in a, in a chair, my grandma's old chair, to tell the story. And opening night I walk out there, and the house manager accidentally left the air conditioning on. And so, it's not a quiet unit, I mean, this is like an old like rundown shoe store. So it's like, now I have to do like double the work--
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--to compete with the sound of the air conditioning. And it was a workout, you know. But that was a turning point of like, re-entering the world as an artist. You know, I had a weird... my perspective is, is different than folks who were born disabled, right? Like I had, I had one, you know, foot or one passport to the non-disabled world and I had a little bit of a life there, and then I popped over to the other world, you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:So it was, that was interesting, right? That was an interesting kind of re-entry, rebirth really, in a way. So that's the theatre side. And then honestly, I think on the TV and film side it has to be Private Practice, and what Shonda Rhimes and Linda Lowy did for me of like taking a"nobody" from Chicago who had never done television, and being like, "All right, let's, let's give this kid a chance." And you know, what turned into what was supposed to be... I think the original thing was two or four episodes, turned into two years of work, and a masterclass in acting on camera, and lifelong friendships. And a career that, you know, thankfully is continued to this day.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah, um, I would love to talk about Private Practice, if we could. For our listeners, Mike was Dr. Gabriel Fife on Private Practice for a couple seasons. Um, what kind of doctor was Dr. Fife? Because I don't remember the specifics.
Michael Patrick Thornton:If I remember correctly, he was a geneticist.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yes, yes.'Cause I remember, there was an episode where you had clients that were little people and they wanted to make sure their fetus also had dwarfism.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Mm-hm.
Nicole Zimmerer:And then you got into an argument with Audra McDonald, the great Audra McDonald. Um, yeah, that's what I remember...
Michael Patrick Thornton:The queen, the goddess herself. And... and I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the gentleman who played the husband of that little person couple is an actor named Nic Novicki. And Nic is the head of the the ReelAbilities Festival, and has just done spectacular work of really advocating for disabled artists and he's just such an ass-kicker.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah, I've heard of the ReelAbilities. I need to do more research, obviously, because I'm always interested in like, disability representation. And you're always on lists, when I look up good disability representation, Gabriel Fife is always on there. And I'm like, "I know that guy! I've made fun of that guy to his face."
Michael Patrick Thornton:Ha, yeah. Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:But, uh, yeah, so--
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Laughs*
Nicole Zimmerer:--you know, you have a career in television and film. So what was the path from Private Practice to where you are now in TV and film?
Michael Patrick Thornton:Well, I don't know if this will answer your question directly, but inside that Private Practice experience of being cast in that and how the writers wrote that character, were embedded several lessons I think that would lay out a template of what projects to choose in the future on what to avoid. And, you know, I'll be the first to admit that in 2008/2009, you know, I was not well-read on like, the tropes in disability representation in pop culture, right. And here was on primetime television a smart, funny, sexually active, confident guy. And his disability was not a subplot. It was not a dramaturgical thing to solve for. It simply was. And by virtue of not really being contextualized, a beautiful magic trick happens where the writers and the producers... you're forcing the audience to kind of give up the need to figure out like, "Well, what's up with the wheelchair?" Right?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And that, that I think is so powerful and so like, that has kind of been... [clacking sound] That's my, that's the... that's me, uh, my creaky wheelchair back that you're hearing in the background. Um. But that's kind of been my litmus test of choosing projects going forward, like... you know, if the disability is like the only thing about this person that we know about, that's not really interesting to me. And I think the more we can force audiences into context-less experiences, the more it quote-unquote"normalizes," and humanizes everybody. And, you know, sometimes, sometimes they're successful at it sometimes are not so successful at it, but I think I'd like to think for the most part, folks are trying. But after Private Practice it was... I got a new agent. And that was a big, a big stepping stone. Paula Muzik at Innovative is my agent. And I don't know, it... things just started stacking up. You know, it's kind of like how we were marveling it's been eight years since we first met. It's like, you know you look back, you're like, "Jesus."
Nicole Zimmerer:Time.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And the year before... time, right?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:It's a thing. The year, the year before the pandemic was wild. I mean I was, I was shooting two different TV shows at the same time. One was called Away, which was a TV show about going to Mars with Hilary Swank that was on Netflix, and the other was a show called Madam Secretary that was on CBS with my Private Practice friend, Tim Daly. So I was bouncing around from Chicago, Vancouver, New York. And there's, there's a... I did a meeting in Los Angeles, I flew to Vancouver, shot in Vancouver until about nine o'clock at night, went to the airport, flew on a red-eye from Vancouver, British Columbia, to New York, landed in JFK at six in the morning, went to the studio in Queens, shot in Queens until about four-thirty, five at night, went to LaGuardia Airport, flew back to Chicago, got on my porch with my wife, Lindsay, and I was like, "Am I alive? Am I real? Am I a fucking ghost right now?"
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Because I had been in 1, 2, 3, 4 cities in 24 hours, you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Damn.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And then so like, my point is like that 2019 was very much like those travel schedules. They were, it was insane. So to go from that to--
Nicole Zimmerer:Nothing.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--hitting the wall at 200 miles an hour of the pandemic, and nothing--
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--was a wild adjustment.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry, you were talking about your travel schedule and I literally got tired.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah. Haha.
Nicole Zimmerer:I'm exhausted for you, even though it was like two years ago. Traveling on one plane is a lot for me. Um, so you talked about this, but I would like to, um, you say... well, you said and I don't know if, you know, things have changed. But you say you don't like to say you're a "disabled artist," you like to say that you're an artist, and then the disability comes afterwards. Is that, is that still true?
Michael Patrick Thornton:I think so. You know, I think... and, you know, it has nothing to do with, you know, not being proud of who I am or wanting to hide anything. I just think that like, the industry puts enough qualifiers on us already--
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--that I don't want to help them out. Haha. So, you know, it's like, you know, I just did this show and, you know, three times in one fucking day, three different people from all levels, you know, an extra to a producer, came up to me and, and said, uh... "You're a really good actor!"
Nicole Zimmerer:Oh, Jesus Christ.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And you know, and like, so this is a podcast, I'm trusting that everyone can kind of hear what that lilt is in my voice, right? It's not like, "Hey, you're a really good actor." Right? It was like--
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--"You're a really good actor!" Like they're like, they're like fucking stunned by it. Right?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And I think like... and I've done, I've done like almost, I don't know, I don't know how many episodes of television... I've been doing this for 12 years. And it's like, I didn't, I didn't win a contest to be here. I'm not a Make A Wish kid.
Nicole Zimmerer:*Laughs*
Michael Patrick Thornton:Like, this is what I do for a living, you know? And so like, that's why I don't say, "I'm a disabled actor." You know, I say, "I'm an actor who uses a wheelchair," you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Um, but like, you know, it's like I don't, I don't say, "Oh, you've gotta meet my Korean dentist." It's just like... right, right? He's just my fucking dentist.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:So I just, I don't want to give them any, any more reasons to not cast us.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yes, very true. I just find it... When people ask me, what do I write, um, I want to say "plays," but... I don't know, I just find it easier to say "disability theatre," because they're like,"Oh, I understand that," because they can look at me and they can be like, "Got it." But at the same time, I'm like, it's not just for, you know, the disabled community, it's for everyone. But it's about the disabled community, because we do need to make out our space. But I would also... I'm thinking about that qualifier a lot, because, you know, I am proud of who I am. And I know you are too. I don't know. It just, it's also like, it's that "disability card," like, when do I play the"cripple card"? Because, you know...
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah, and it, and you want to be a good ally and advocate. And you know, I really underestimated what being in front of 9-12 million people a week does in terms of the expectation of being an advocate all of a sudden, which I wasn't prepared for.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And, and having to work through my own thoughts and my own feelings, which you know, people change over time.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And it is really fucking tricky. Because if you have a group that has been marginalized, and with disability you're talking about the largest minority in the world that is--
Nicole Zimmerer:Mm-hm.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--least represented, right?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:You've got 1-in-4 people in America, at least, who admit to having a disability. And given our national penchant for arrogance and pride and shame, you'd be wise to assume that number's higher than being reported.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Right?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And yet, what was it last year? 1%? 2% of the characters on TV and film were disabled? And out of that 1 and 2%, how many, what was the percentage of times that they were played by an actor with that, with a disability? Like, I think it was also 2%? I mean, the numbers are, are woefully depressing.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And so I get that when a group like ours finally gets their time in the spotlight, that it's like,"Move the fuck aside. We're just telling our stories now. And you're gonna have to listen, because historically you haven't."
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And I think there's value to that. And I think, you know, I think it's all in the timing. And I think it's just having, you know, I've been boxing a lot at home, and I think it's, I think it's having enough combinations of punches. Like, that's an uppercut, and you also need to have some jabs. And sometimes it's great to do stories where... and this is my personal feeling, sometimes it's great to tell stories where the wheelchair's never even referenced with dialogue.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And we just fucking force people to either like fixate on it, or get over it. And when they get over it, like a beautiful thing happens. And then there are times to tell stories that are about recovery, or relationships with parents, or loved ones leaving us because they can't deal with it like... it's inescapable.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:You know. I'm trying to, I'm trying to write a project, or I am writing a project about FDR right now. And like, man, there's a fucking riddle, because how do you, how do you not roll into the trap of inspiration? Right?
Nicole Zimmerer:Right.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Like, it is astounding. Like, the dude almost died of whatever he had, some think it was poliomyelitis and it may very well could have been, and like, became President of the United States and helped defeat Adolf Hilter. Right?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:But then the moment you're like "And he did it all from, from a wheelchair!" You know? It's like...
Nicole Zimmerer:*Laughs*
Michael Patrick Thornton:That, then you're right back into like, the problem! You know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:It's like, well, how do you...? And that gets, so that's very tricky. But hopefully we'll figure it out.
Nicole Zimmerer:You'll figure it out, you've been wanting to play FDR for years. Years.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yes. And thank God, the brilliant people... they just cast as FDR, uh, Kiefer Sutherland!
Nicole Zimmerer:Are you kidding me?
Michael Patrick Thornton:Kiefer Sutherland. Kiefer Sutherland, everybody. Haha. No.
Nicole Zimmerer:Ugh! Okay. You know what?
Michael Patrick Thornton:So that, that is one of the upper cuts I'm throwing. I'm just like, usually stuff like that I'd be like, you know, "Same shit, different kind of ableism."
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:But uh, this thing I'm like, you know what, this is fuck, this is fucking wrong. And--
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:--this man has more money than God. He doesn't need to do this role.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And, you know, I'm not, it's not advocating for me to play it. Like I just... Just, you know what? It'd be great if you auditioned people for it.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Why don't we just start with that?
Nicole Zimmerer:Right, right. I mean, a poster for HBO Max's Titans came out, and they're apparently adding Barbara Gordon. So I googled who was playing Barbara Gordon, because I was like, "Oh, they're gonna do..." They did it right! They got a disabled actress and everything. And I was like,"Yes! Good. I don't have to be angry about this one." But now, now I get to be angry about that one. I'm, I'm not... well, I am angry but it's, you know, we're gonna fix it. We're gonna write a very strongly-worded letter.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Haha. I have a T shirt that says, "I believe in Barbara Gordon."
Nicole Zimmerer:*Deep breath* Mike, I figured out what I want to do with Barbara Gordon. I have decided I don't want to be Barbara Gordon, like I would rather not be cast as Batgirl--
Michael Patrick Thornton:Mm-hm.
Nicole Zimmerer:--or Oracle. But I want to write and produce the movie. I want to write and produce. So I'm putting it out there to manifest. I will do all the research, DC can call me. Um, yeah. That's what I want.
Michael Patrick Thornton:There's a comic, and I don't know if it's just called "Oracle," I have it in my library. But I remember being stunned and it showed her just doing a transfer from her wheelchair to the shower bench. And it was like, beautifully drawn, humane, moving, sexy. It was like all, it was like the whole cornucopia. You know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Um, but I remember just fucking swooning over that comic.
Nicole Zimmerer:I mean, I love it when that kind of thing happens to us. But it's also very sad that it happens to us at all, because we're not used to that happening. Reading something--
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:--or seeing something, like on the television, or you know, anywhere and being like, "Oh, they got something right for once." Um. Mike in terms of like casting and writing and overall representation, what would you like to see in Hollywood?
Michael Patrick Thornton:I'd like, I'd like to not see Kiefer Sutherland fucking play FDR. That's what I'd like to not see. Um, I would like to see a commensurate representation of disabled characters played by actors with disabilities, you know, that matches with the ratio of disability in our country. I'd like to stop seeing"triumph over adversity" stories. I'd like to see more stories where the disability is simply wet-wired into the fabric of the environment and not a plot point. I'd like to not see stories where we wonder if someone's going to recover, at the end of the show. Um...
Nicole Zimmerer:There are a lot of those.
Michael Patrick Thornton:There are a lot of those. Um...
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And I don't know, like, I found... My wife, Lindsay, and I went to Paris and London for our honeymoon and... Paris, I found... I was really nervous about going there, I'd never been there before, and I was trying to learn the language a little bit before we went, but I was a little scaredy-cat. And I thought that it was going to be so kind of retrograde, and like this place that like loves beauty and like, you know... like, beautiful bodies and whatever, that they would kind of like look at me in the wheelchair and be like, "Ugh." You know? And then I was like, I just can't wait to get the Paris part over to get to London. Because like, you know, "They get it." You know? Um. And the exact opposite happened, like London could not have been like, less friendly, in terms of architecture, in terms of accessibility of transportation, in terms of just people staring. And Paris was like, unbelievably warm and welcoming. And what I'm driving at is, I feel like there's something weird about American culture, in particular, when it comes to disability. And I don't know if it's that non-disabled people see us as like, uncomfortable reminders that like, their body is fallible or something like that, you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Like I don't know what it is, but it is unique to us. We are a country that like, thinks like, you know, "Workout and pedal on your bike in your room that doesn't go anywhere, and you'll live forever." And we have a city on the west coast is like, "You'll never age!" You know, like, we're kind of weird. And...
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:And so I wonder if I want... to answer your question, I more want the culture of like America to change and I want non-disabled people to kind of shift their biases in order to, to have us have more nuanced and representative stories, you know?
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:A little more Paris, a little less London.
Nicole Zimmerer:I think in a weird way COVID is helping with that, because during COVID everybody was kind of living like, disabled people live every day. Well, some of us. Because they were stuck in their house.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Yeah.
Nicole Zimmerer:They couldn't do anything, they couldn't go anywhere.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Mm-hm.
Nicole Zimmerer:And I was like,"Welcome to the Thunder Dome y'all!"
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Laughs*
Nicole Zimmerer:Mike, it was so great hearing about the history of The Gift Theatre and like how it all got started. If listeners want to get more involved, where can they go?
Michael Patrick Thornton:I would say you know, if you're in Chicago, definitely, you know, keep up with what The Gift is doing, join our mailing list, go to thegifttheatre.org. And we'll be producing live back in 2022, but until then we'll have in-person events, some storytelling events and pop-ups here and there. And then, I just wrapped a show for AMC called 61st Street with Courtney B. Vance, and a smaller role in that, playing a judge but it's a hell of a story, a Chicago story about justice, and I think that comes out in 2022.
Nicole Zimmerer:Well, Mike, I just want to thank you again for showing up. And I love you, and I'll talk to you soon. And, um, for everybody listening, follow The Gift on social media, they always do great, great work. They produce me, so you know they have taste. Um...
Michael Patrick Thornton:*Laughs*
Nicole Zimmerer:But yeah, thanks for talking to us. I always love talking to you. And, uh, yeah.
Michael Patrick Thornton:Thanks for having me, this was a real, real pleasure. And I look forward to reading what you're working on, now and in the future.
Nicole Zimmerer:Yeah. Same. Thank you for listening to this episode of Break A Leg! And thank you to our guest, Mike, for joining us today. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @breakalegpod, that's break a leg, P-O-D. Let us know what you thought of the episode or tell us who you think we should have on next. For a full transcript of each episode, use the link in the episode description. The easiest way to support this show is by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. And make sure to click that Subscribe button! Break A Leg! is produced by Scott MacDonald, and our cover art was created by Sasha and Alexander Schwartz. I'm Nicole Zimmerer and I will see you next time.
