Art and Activism: Pioneering Theater Artists with Disabilities

About this video

Wade’s oral history, recorded in Berkeley in 2002 and 2003 by Esther Ehrlich and Kathy Cowan for the Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (now the Oral History Center). Over seven tapes and more than six hours, Wade talks about her life and work: disability culture and theory, writing and performing, the arts and media, Wry Crips and her solo career.

It is the fullest account of her life in her own words, and it is drawn on by the scholars who have written about her since, including Ewelina Godlewska-Byliniak in her 2022 article “‘My Hands’: The Disability Experience in the Auto-Narratives of Cheryl Marie Wade”.

The recordings were digitised by the California Audiovisual Preservation Project and are shown here from the Internet Archive. The archive notes that brightness levels vary, that the sound is loud, as in the original recording, and that the last minute of Part 4 drops out and breaks up. See the recording at the Internet Archive. It can also be watched on Calisphere.

Copyright: The Regents of the University of California, who have given permission for the recording to be watched online.

See also Wade’s shorter interview with Pamela Walker.