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Autism Accomodated With Sensory-Friendly Productions

Charles Gentry.

For families with children on the Autism spectrum, sitting through a play can be a challenge, but new sensory-friendly productions are trying to help.

This weekend The Magik Theatre will make some changes to their production of A Charlie Brown Christmas, to make kids who need a little more room or a quieter environment more comfortable.  

Charlie Brown is depressed, but maybe directing the Christmas play will cheer him up, and help him find the true meaning of the holiday. This year, San Antonio’s MagikTheatre is bringing the 1965 cartoon A Charlie Brown Christmas to life for the usual audience and a special one.

Shelley Weber is the Director of Education at the Magik Theatre, which strives to serve all families in San Antonio with arts education and performances.

"We felt there was a segment of the population that maybe we weren’t serving as well as we could," says Weber. 

For the past few years in the children’s theater world, there’s been a movement to better accommodate kids with sensory sensitivity and their families, including those on the Autism spectrum. This season, starting with Charlie Brown, the Magik is offering one weekend and one week day performance that is designated as sensory-friendly.

“We also have families that just have small children that don’t like it when the lights go down, or have noise sensitivity," says Weber, "and we’re just trying to provide an environment where all of those families can come and feel safe and welcome and have an experience their entire family to share together.”

During these shows they’ll leave the house lights on, turn the volume down, sell fewer tickets so there’s more personal space, and add a closed circuit t.v. in the lobby so if a family does need to get up it can still watch the show.

Tracie Quinn thinks that’s a great idea. Her oldest son Ben is almost 8 years old, and is on the Autism spectrum. Quinn says sometimes Ben can react hysterically or angrily to things, sometimes screaming, or feeling anxiety. She says two of his triggers are loud and surprising things, and his space-to-people ratio. 

“The more people that are in a small space, and the more activity there is, the more Ben sort of retreats into his own world," says Quinn. 

Quinn says it’s taken a lot of therapy and hard work, but Ben is controlling his anger much better. The family can go to the movies and the store, and the playground if it’s not too crowded.

"I’m a little bit more big on 'let’s see if we can push Ben, I think if we give him help and support him he can do what everybody else is.' And then my husband’s a little bit more like 'Oh let’s protect him, let’s not set him up to have a meltdown, let’s set him up to have to be explained,” says Quinn. 

Still, Quinn says, they’d like to take Ben to one of these sensory-friendly performances.

Credit Charles Gentry
Ariel Rosen as Lucy and Sam Weeks as Charlie Brown in the Magik Theatre's production of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

“The biggest benefit to having those is the parents and the caregivers can just kind of sit back and breathe and not have to worry about 'oh how am I going to explain this, or am I going to have to again apologize for my child, or should I have to apologize for my child" says Quinn, "and just all the mental stuff that you go through because you want your child to experience as much of the world as you can. But the reality is there are still people who don’t understand autism.”

Dylan Collins is the director of this Charlie Brown production. After many years in the theater world, he was just introduced to the sensory-friendly practice at The Magik Theatre, and says the pilot productions went great.

“To see the people feel at ease, and just get up and walk around, and actually I like the quieter noise levels myself, sometimes shows get kind of loud," says Collins. 

Collins says Charlie Brown is a pretty calm show that lends itself well to this experience, except maybe one of Snoopy’s disco-ball lit dance sequences.

Collins says his actors are professionals, and can handle the audience getting up and moving around.

“We’ve already given them the heads up, but we’ll probably get together and talk through the show as a cast a little bit," says Collins. "I think Lucy gets a little mean to Charlie Brown, so we’ll probably tell Lucy to tone it down a little bit.”

After all, it is Christmas.

The MagikTheatre’s sensory-friendly production of Charlie Brown is Sunday, December 6th at 2 pm. 

Virginia joined Texas Public Radio in September, 2015. Prior to hosting and producing Fronteras for TPR, she worked at WBOI in Indiana to report on often overlooked stories in the community. Virginia began her reporting career at the Statehouse in Salem, OR, and has reported for the Northwest News Network and Oregon Public Broadcasting.