Mickey Rowe - Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actors Journey to Broadways Biggest Stage

Mickey Rowe (he/him) has had a prolific and varied career as an actor, director, consultant, and public speaker; he is now highly sought after both nationally and internationally. He was the first autistic actor to play Christopher Boone, the lead role in the Tony Awardwinning play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He has also appeared as the title role in the Tony Awardwinning play Amadeus and more. Mickey has been featured in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, PBS, Vogue, Playbill, NPR, CNN, Wall Street Journal, HuffPost, and Forbes and has keynoted at organizations including the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center, Yale University, Columbia University, Disability Rights Washington, the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway, the DAC of the South Korean government, and more. Mickey was the founding artistic director of National Disability Theatre, which works in partnership with Tony Awardwinning companies such as La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California, and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

I would like to acknowledge the many people without whose work this book would not exist: the mountain-moving Helen Marion; my incredible agent Allison Hellegers and Stimola Literary Studio; my brilliant editor Christen Karniski as well as the entire team at Rowman & Littlefield; my publicists Deb Shapiro, Elizabeth Shreve, and Suzanne Williams at Shreve Williams; and most importantly, the generations of disability rights activists who have come before me, especially Dominick awniczak Evans, Lydia X. Z. Brown, Lawrence Carter-Long, Alice Wong, Haben Girma, Christine DeZinno Bruno, and Sara Luterman, I am standing on all of your shoulders.

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller

I am standing alone, starkly center stage in Broadways biggest theatre, with what feels like Broadways brightest spotlight radiantly burning down on me. The brash beam of light tingles as it warms my skin. I feel the prickle of moisture tickling my hairline; I want to wipe it, but I dont want to look fidgety. Everyone expects me to be fidgety.

Ok everyone, take a ten.

The stage managers voice slices through the speakers, and the spotlight cuts off as sharply as it had first burst on.

Today was one long whirlwind of activity as all the technical elements that would come together for tonights star-studded fundraiser were being coordinated. I am giving the keynote speech, and I am unendingly thankful that the rehearsing part of the programming is over. I am finally able to get my bearings.

I descend from the stage and begin to roam, walking alone through the house of the cavernous Gershwin Theatre, home of the Tony Awardwinning Wicked on Broadway. There is nowhere more magical than to be in an empty theatre. My eyes scan the room, taking in the expertly crafted, velvety blue-gray seats. A deep and peaceful ocean that will soon be whipped into a maelstrom as people flood in to hear Kelli OHara sing, and then witness a real-life autistic person speaking to them delivering the keynote at this big-name charity event. There is some quietly lingering performing monkey sense about it all, but its overwhelmed by a sense of awe. Who would have thought that a legally blind three-year-old who could only communicate with his own made-up sign language would end up here? As an autistic child, I was sure that no one cared about my thoughts, my perspective. And yet, today I will fill a theatre with people from all walks of life, all interested in hearing about my experiences living in a world set up by and for nonautistic people.

The awe never really goes away. I have had the privilege of spending much of the year so far doing the same thing as I will tonight, at distinguished establishments such as the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Yale. The year has been a flurry of whirlwind speaking engagement trips. This trip, though, I feel at rest for the first time, settled in the center of the whirlwind. Earlier this morning, sitting in a New York diner eating corned beef hash and drinking coffee, I felt at home in my own skin. It was so much different than two years earlier, when I embarked on my first solo trip anywhere. I was flown out from Seattle to New York City to audition for the leading role in the only play on Broadway with an autistic lead character: Christopher Boone in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. That was my first time traveling on my own, and I felt a bit like Christopher, an overwhelmed autistic person taking my own adventure, submerged in one of the busiest cities on earth.

The city. The sensory overload. To get myself from one moment to the next I had to repeatedly remind myself: be fearless in the pursuit of your goals, be courageous in the pursuit of what you know is right. Like a mantra I had written for myself.

Curious Incident and being the first openly autistic actor to play an autistic character professionally has completely changed my life, and now here I am, in airports and hotels feeling like the proverbial fish out of water. Funnily enough, I do think to myself sometimes that I am in general a bit like a fish: I like to keep moving. Swinging, rocking. It helps me focus. My whole life Ive been discouraged from visibly autistic behaviors like rocking back and forth, but over the course of my adult life, Ive decided that if a meeting is dragging, a little bit of movement sure helps me lock back in. Ive finessed it enough to find the balance of moving enough to focus and regulate myself but doing so where it doesnt concern or worry nonautistic people. Nonautistic people seem to be easily worried by my movements.

I study the velvety seats, one by one. Who will sit in this one? Maybe a parent of an autistic child, simply wanting some reassurance that everything will be okay. Theyre wanting to head home tonight feeling encouraged that their child does indeed have a shot at falling in love and having a family of their ownwhat they feel is leading a normal life. Theyre hoping that seeing an autistic person delivering a keynote speech on a Broadway stage will give their weary hearts a rejuvenating jolt, so they can keep the faith that despite the fact that 85 percent of college graduates on the autism spectrum are unemployed, their child can actually make it into that elusive 15 percent of autistic college graduates with a job. I know these parents. They flood my inbox regularly, grasping and aching for me to calm their fears of the unknown.

How about this seat? Maybe here will be a person who is incredibly skeptical about the quality of content I will deliver tonight. They expect to leave feeling proud of how noble they were to encouragingly nod and clap at a developmentally delayed person piecing together simple words about his hard times in life. Maybe they will try to wait around after to clasp my hand while slowly and clearly telling me they were so inspired by my speech; did I write it all by myself? Wow!! I know these people too. They are the teachers, the family friends who thought I was too dim to notice them speaking in hushed tones about delays and retardation, voices brightening when I came close, being oh so Very Encouraging of the most simple things I did.

Im sure these types of people and more will fill these seats tonight. I finally break my gaze from the repetitive rows of chairs, looking up to see the mammoth set pieces being stored above the stage, hoisted up by giant pulleys. It looks like all available space above the stage is filled, meticulously hung with lights, speakers, and all other manner of bare-bones elements that are primed and ready to burst into life at the word of a stage manager, stunning spellbound audiences with spectacular theatre magic and special effects. There is nothing sensory friendly about the brash fullness of what they are capable of unleashing. But there is nothing sensory friendly about the world I live in either. Like many autistic people, I have sensory processing disorder. This city is a continual assault on all senses. Im grateful to have found my ways of navigating a world that is not sensory friendly. Headphones, V-neck shirts, the subtle clenching and unclenching of a fist.