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They have gathered together from the five boroughs and paid $485 for a workshop to become the stars they always dreamed of being and to discover the Ethel Merman within.
After four nighttime rehearsals, 15 stars were born. Well, that’s a stretch, but nevertheless, some of them had never sung a note outside a shower curtain, and now they found themselves performing the other night at the Triad on West 72nd Street. They entered the stage and warmed to the spotlight, easing into their numbers with breezy patter. . . .
Peggy Eason, 62, (pictured) is blind and learns lyrics from a tape. She works for the New York State Parole Division.
“I always wanted to be a star and to make it on the Great White Way,” she said before performing a song a longtime friend had written for her, blasting out from behind dark shades. “Broadway, here I come!”
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From a NY Times story:
