Founder/Artistic Director of the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped
The National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped, Inc. (NTWH) aspires to be the finest theatre arts-training institution in the world for persons with physical disabilities. We are a non-profit educational, production, and advocacy organization founded in 1977 by Brother Rick Curry, S.J., PhD. Since 1977, we have grown into an international institution with a campuses in the heart of New York City and in the coastal town of Belfast, Maine. In addition to our workshop classes, we offer theatre and community workshops and forums for dramatic literature on themes of disability, maintain a professional repertory theatre that showcases the talents of NTWH students, and act as a management and promotion agency for our students.
The NTWH-Belson Bakery Program in Belfast, Maine trains interested students in the culinary art of baking, packing and selling all-natural dog treats and various types of breads baked from collected Jesuit recipes.
The National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped is first and foremost a school, offering rigorous and disciplined training in the theatre arts to its students. We are the only place in the country where new dramatic literature on the theme of disability is regularly workshopped and produced. We believe in the celebration of our differences and we believe in the power of teaching the theatre arts. Most important, we believe in the overwhelming transformations that are possible when the two things come together in a challenging and supportive environment.
NTWH:
Advocates for persons with disabilities in the theatre and offers a forum for dramatic literature on themes of disability.
Challenges the exclusion of disabled students from existing theatre programs by offering both academic and practical programs.
Offers the highest level of professional academic instruction in acting, oral interpretation, music, movement, dance, playwriting, theatre management and technical theatre.
Creates a theatrical arena in which disabled and able-bodied actors and playwrights collaborate, train, and perform together.
Provides students with communication and job-training skills that empower them to contribute to their communities and increase earning potential.
The world of the disabled is a disparate one. Its members range across a vast spectrum in terms of age, lifestyle, background, and personal experience with disability. The National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped seeks to create a community out of these individual differences. We do this not merely through the shared experience of disability, but more important, through the shared experience of being tested, educated, and sustained by a group of people who are coming together for a common goal. Once a student joins us at NTWH, they are part of our community forever. At NTWH, theatre is the tool, and education is the process, but the end results - professional skills, a sense of community, renewed self-sufficiency, rekindled self-esteem, and new-found independence - are limitless.