“Nerdy. You’ve got to act a lot more nerdy,” director Jim Gill tells Charlie Miller, a Winnetka teenager, at rehearsal. “You’re walking onstage too cool. So there’s not enough contrast when you walk off really cool. Do something like this: put your hands in your pockets, head down, and take these really nerdy itty-bitty steps as you walk onstage. Think nerd. Got it?”
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A generation ago, in the standard heart-to-heart between doctor and parents after the birth of a Down’s syndrome child, the family was encouraged to institutionalize their child soon after birth–for everyone’s welfare. Today people keep their kids at home and want the same kinds of self-esteem-building school and extracurricular activities for their disabled children that other kids have. But even given the standard of care that’s now available for these children, Jim Gill has still accomplished the inconceivable.
As a teenager, Gill got a job as a counselor at a camp for disabled teenagers in his hometown, Rockford, Illinois. By the time he was 19 he was running the place during the summers. After getting a degree in elementary education at the University of Illinois, he worked up a popular one-man show for groups of kids with special needs and worked as a play therapist at a toy-lending library for handicapped children. He says something draws him to young people with disabilities, but he can’t describe what it is.
Diane Saxonberg, Gill’s directing assistant, says, “Comedy expresses the most basic human feelings. These actors aren’t intimidated or inhibited, and that’s where comedy derives from. In improvisation, sometimes actors think too much and too hard, and they end up not knowing what they feel and their expressions aren’t sincere. They are sincere in this show.”
A smile spreads across his face. “You probably never noticed,” he says, “but ten years ago, people with Down’s syndrome hung their heads. They never looked you in the eye. They were ashamed of their limitations. But these kids, just look at them. They have great self-esteem.”
