SPRING AWAKENING'S Ali Stroker Brings Authenticity To Kylie Jenner-Inspired Wheelchair Pictorial

"We are not putting people in black face anymore", noted Spring Awakening's Ali Stroker regarding Kylie Jenner's pictorial for the December/January issue of Interview Magazine where she's posed as a wheelchair-using dominatrix. "When we put them in a wheelchair, what is this saying?"

As reported by BroadwayWorld when the issue was released, Stroker, who is the first wheelchair-using Broadway performer, was happy to see that the conversation about non-wheelchair users portraying members of her community has been introduced, but stressed that now is the time for authenticity.

In a new photo spread for YDY, Titled "Feel Free To Stare: Disability And Fashion," Stroker offers authenticity.

(See Instagram post below for a sample.)

While the accompanying article, written by Kenta Murakami with Stroker, doesn't accuse Jenner or photographer Steven Klein of intentionally fetishizing disability, it notes the images "fall within a line of fashion imagery that treats disability as a trope, employed variously to suggest a model's mental vacancy, a violent disfiguration of beauty, or a sort of perverse passivity in the face of an enabled viewer's gaze."

"A lot of people were angry", Stroker recalls of the reaction to the issue. "But I remembering feeling that this could bring us to a larger conversation that needs to be had. I think what people's anger showed was the absence of authentic representations of our community. I don't even think Kylie meant to reference disability, but when there's nothing else out there what are we supposed to feel?"

Interview's reaction to the anger is that Klein's work was "engaging with art historical precedents," especially citing the late 1960s sculptures of Allen Jones, who created BDSM-inspired furniture pieces out of female mannequins.

The Jenner photos have been accused on social media of misinterpreting what wheelchairs mean to those who use them. 17 year old Ophelia Brown posts on Twitter, "a wheelchair is, by definition, a mobility device. This means that it gives freedom and independence to the person who needs it.... Kylie Jenner tries to profit off the misconception 'wheelchair bound' means we're helpless... My wheelchair is my FREEDOM."

And while Kylie Jenner's photographs exude sexuality, Stroker insists on the need for the disabled to be seen exuding such qualities.

"I didn't know how to express my sexuality because there was no one representing it for me. And if it's not represented then does it not exist? Is it possible?"

Pornography has no shortage of sexual representations of the disabled, but those images are predominantly fetishized.

"It felt exciting to create these images that in some ways already exist, but to see them created with someone actually living with the experience of being in a wheelchair. It feels powerful. It feels like I'm able to say something; that we're looking people straight in the eye."

"Being in a chair brings such a different perspective to things," she adds. "Every day I'm seeing the world through, what I have decided to be, a powerful lens. Not only do I literally see the world from a different perspective, but I see the way people receive me, which is such a reflection of where we are. I also see, through what I've accomplished, that I have the power to shift that by feeling powerful in myself."

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Top Photo by Linda Lenzi

Deaf West Theatre's acclaimed production of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's SPRING AWAKENING, directed byMichael Arden and choreographed by Spencer Liff, opened on Sunday night, September 27, at Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre for a limited engagement ending January 24th.

Based on Frank Wedekind's controversial 1891 expressionist play of the same name and featuring an electrifying pop/rock score, SPRING AWAKENING follows the lives of a group of adolescents as they navigate their journey from adolescence to adulthood in a fusion of morality, sexuality and rock & roll. An extraordinary creative team including Michael Arden and Spencer Liff has reinvented the groundbreaking musical about lost innocence and the struggles of youth in true Deaf West style.

Based on Frank Wedekind's controversial 1891 expressionist play of the same name and featuring an electrifying pop/rock score, Spring Awakening follows the lives of a group of adolescents as they navigate their journey from adolescence to adulthood in a Fusion of morality, sexuality and rock & roll. An extraordinary creative team including Michael Arden and Spencer Liff has reinvented the groundbreaking musical about lost innocence and the struggles of youth in true Deaf West style.

Spring Awakening is produced by Ken Davenport, Cody Lassen, Hunter Arnold, David J. Kurs, and Deaf West Theatre, with Carl Daikeler, Sandi Moran, Chockstone Pictures, Caiola Productions,Marguerite Hoffman, H. Richard Hopper, LearyTodd Productions, MarKolTop Productions, R&D Theatricals, Brian Cromwell Smith, Invisible Wall Productions, Monica Horan Rosenthal, and Associate Producer Kayla Greenspan.