What Happened to Ginger Smith: Artistry

This article is about discovering one’s disabilities in the New York City’s Theatre Industry.

Contains candid, heavy content.

I am a disabled artist
Always been a disabled artist.
Whether one can ‘see’ my disabilities or not.

Born with a nervous system disability, processing differences,

a unilateral seeing impairment.

Autistic.

Lost my hearing when I got COVID, working it back.

. . .

Theatre and dance were one of the only ways I could process the world.

‘Stand on number 6.’

‘Dance your heart out.’

Or

audition advice that

started unmasking my Autism 20 years ago:

’Never be more than who you are or less than who you are’.

(Note: ‘Being who you are’ is not ‘safe’ for everyone or in every moment.)

Many artists are deeply embodied; Creation, art can be lifelines.

Access is life-saving and often pinched off.

. . .

For 30 years,

I lived as someone ‘trying to make it on Broadway’ in an

tap-dancing tornado of

authoritarian instinct,

joyful neural-connection, desperation,

and a will to live.

Just get me to a rehearsal schedule, damnit.

. . .

Did my first musical when I was 6.

Was the "Star Search" Junior Vocalist winner for my state at age 9.

Professional debut at 10,
next year working with Academy / Tony noms.

Not sure how "talented" I was, but

I was authentic and uninhibited

by neuronormative standards

and found a life saving connection within my body.

. . .

Worked as a local hire in the summers until I was 18.
Moved to New York to attend NYU.

My first day of classes in a BFA program there was 9/11.

Subsequently, I first entered the Mental Health Industry.

. . .

In 2006, moved back to NYC, got a job, an ‘Equity card’ shortly after.

The job was called a ‘swing’ — a person who understudies 7 ensemble / dance tracks.

A pattern-recognizer’s dream.

The only fulltime job I’ve held down in my life.

Im 42.

—

This whole time - I wasn't seeing, hearing, processing in the ways the industry (and life) was being dictated or spoken about.

I was processing in many great ways.

But the disparity was disabling in this arena (and more so in life).

By the time I could actually arrive at an audition, I did things like

+ Walk in on the person before me's audition when I couldn’t process the monitor’s instructions in an echo-heavy hallway.

+ Get to a voice over call on behalf of my agent, then not be able to read the script.

+ Plow through “Law & Order" sides with compliments, not remember the casting director’s name - ahem, Johnathan Strauss - and do what one might logically do:

….ask.

. . .

In 2007, I was dancing 6 hours a day.

Class was a place to feel my body, connect helpfully.

My outer world was devastating.

(And because....dance ❤.)

. . .

I was called in for the Maggie / Val cover of the 1st nat’l of the Chorus Line revival late in the process.

(This was the best psycho-identity analysis I’ve received to date, and was a source for critical self-discovery.)

I’d been doing the choreo for years, done the show,

but got to the audition, with a nervous system so burnt out I couldn’t point my toe.

. . .

Within 2 weeks, I was in outpatient therapy 4x / week and couldn’t walk.

25 years old, in olympic-style shape, able only to sit and look at my hand.

Not depressed.

Catatonic.

. . .

The mental health industry is known to pathologize difference further marginalize it and that institution began to take over my life.

Over the next few years, I
was put on a total of 7 psychoactive medications

that didn't help,
I didn’t need,
don't currently take,
and wreaked havoc on my system.

(Medications can help some people.

Like some Autistics — research has shown — I evolved out of any benefit, each and every time and then more were added.

Nothing was going to alter my deeply-embodied - but distressed - life-energy, except understanding and support of the differences, disabilities. )

. . .

Therapy, is where I (and my parents) spent 20 years — inpatient, outpatient, private, medicaid, ivy league co-therapists, an Autistic / PDA-affirming therapists…

As I went on in ‘therapy’ my internal resources disappeared further.

My nervous system eventually ‘recovered’ but I had unmasked completely and re-masked according to others’ ideas of what ‘should be.’

My ability to access art — to sing, to dance, listen to music, to speak — left for years at a time.

I was blamed each step of the way.

Narrative, ability to speak (the actual motor function of the tongue) — literally — gone.

I would get jobs and get fired; Or have to quit after a week.

I dedicated my life, body, relationships — to therapies, places, people, ways that reinforced the roots of my problems.

If there had been "a way" that way - or, frankly, any other way - I had the will.

. . .

My therapists would say things like "you know, you're really obsessed with this...'career’.

I mean, Had she ever *met* a theatre person…?

Telling someone to stop an interest that their DNA is surviving on….

studying rocks, dogs, or dance patterns - or the only kind of job they could do, is a yeah no.

Who needed a therapeutic adjustment?

. . .

For whatever reason — monotropism, attachment, stupidity, sacred contract, or all of them — the theatrical soul contract wasn't done yet.

In 2017, I moved to New York City, a 3rd time,

to “try to make it on Broadway”.

. . .

By this time,

social media and rapid-fire communication had taken over.

I could not understand why people were posing with Starbucks + plastered smile for ‘socials, then spewing self-hate or hatred towards others in the next breath.

I could not keep up with things like Pay to Plays and predatory coaching; Dangled carrots that ate my soul.

If I could attend a dance audition, I had to push to the one place in the room where i could see the combination —
without any awareness that what I needed is called an accommodation.

I read lips and had no idea.

The parts of the theatre industry I had been able to access or ‘fake’ through

were now mostly inaccessible.

Video & visual components dominated.

(I’ve just recovered enough to watch YouTube for the first time; It’s 2025.)

I believed people who were kind, helpful or interested to my face, who laughed when I wasn't in the room.

Not because I'm naive.

Because, I don't generally engage that way.

I didn’t just sign up for it; I

Stockholm-Syndrome’d myself to it for

the love

and a perceived promise of exception of ‘making it on Broadway’, which I’d been sold / bought into.

Perhaps a bit like Kevin’s ‘Orlando’.

Day after day, ‘like a fool on a fool’s journey’, I marched onto the playing field, cymbals crashing, knowing deep down I couldn’t play that way.

. . .

The irony is:

I’m a worker.

A theatre-worker.

I was there to work.

I could do the job, but not the actor-masking.

Everyone kept talking about this community.

After 30 years of "being a part"

(albeit not with access to the ‘right’ door....)

I look back and

like Mayor Shinn, wonder:

WHERE’S THE [COMMUNITY]?!

. . .

Over this time, subconsciously, I was using audition technique and creative processes

to connect deeply, somatically to Neurodivergence

and that was unmasking my Autism.

How that looked was empowering,

mortifying, dangerous,

bridge-burning,

liberating.

. . .

When the pandemic hit,

a theatre acquaintance

looked at me and said directly:

"You know, I think you might be Autistic."

Someone who they, themselves,

had taken an empathetic journey

and found what no textbook

or "diagnostic criteria" —accurately teaches.

Genuine application of theatre’s power of transcendence.

An arrival point endless theatrical factors, lineage.

Thank you. It saved my life.

. . .

After receiving an ‘official’ diagnosis of Autism and ADHD, the summer of 2021,

I was denied
medical and
mental health care
at 42 places in 90 days when moving back to New York City.

Denied long term mental health care at a public hospitals and other places for reasons like, ‘You can’t be diagnosed Autistic at age 37.”

My neuropsychologist suggested I come off the medications slowly,

but I was forced off of them overnight that summer — 7 psychoactive medications —

including an Adderall crash and SSRI —

some I'd been on for 15+ years
at a time when I had stopped breathing 80x/hour in my sleep.

My brain and body had not been getting sufficient oxygen for some time.

My husband and I became unhoused.
Lost the ability to have children.

People I loved, people whose weddings I sang in and had no idea we’d had a relationship problem

hung up the phone when I asked for help.

Thus,

the 3 years that followed, there was a threat to my life:
1. If I went to bed.
2. If I woke up.

It was like 9/11 over and over again.
. . .

Fellow Neurodivergents, marginalized people, spirits, template-changers — for those who have faced this — this all may come as no surprise.

This is, in fact, how systemic isolation, pathologization, dehumanization, systems of white supremacy, control…work.

. . .

That summer, a fellow artist from a ‘theatre community’

I'd spent time, money I had to make myself sick to get, showed up and

gave my heart, energy to for 16 years - a fellow artist from there, whom I’d spoken to in person twice. . .

Saw me on West 50th Street.

Pointed in my face, and laughed.

. . .

That is the day my self-respect was born.

That was the day Yeah No was born.

. . .

I was never an ‘actor’; I was something different, that I haven’t put a finger on yet and may never.

‘In the wrong st-ory…’.

Living through the songs, lines, process, characters

whom I never played, except in my head.

Living through their Autism, ADHD, PDA to come into my own.

We’re going to have the most beautiful, healing, bellowing laugh about that.

. . .

All this is to say:

If you see me and / or are cheering me on, thank you very much.

You are engaging with
someone who lost and still loses abilities

to see, hear, breathe, speak, sing, converse, live, love.

Someone who for extended holes
in life did not have access
to their body, life, or art.

Someone who lost their family.

Someone recouping their soul, hearing loss through stored vibrations of art.

Someone only art and God can interpret, not you.
May we all create spaces to be with people this way.

. . .

If we've shared a rehearsal room or holding room, thank you.

If you've opened your heart, couch, self, friendship, thank you.

If you’ve been a friend, mentor, coach to my face

then laughed behind my back, thank you.

If we had an exchange that harmed you and you feel comfortable,

you have a judgment-free place to connect in a way that might help move us forward.

In
peace,
connection

The honor is mine.

. . .

This story is
one thread in an industry quilt.

One.

One was able to get to a computer screen and be read.

Moving forward, we will ask:

- Why the incongruences between artist, art, and reality?
- Who is wiling to wage perceived legacy for actual legacy?

- As urgent:

Why are Renaissance-like

skills, power, spirit,

resources, heart, intellect, bandwidth

put into compulsively-unwatched submission videos.

Audrey says it best:

‘Something's very wrong here.’

Feeding the plant is not an option anymore.

Virtual options available.

Yeah No, NYC

Stay Tuned.

About Vinnie.