On Stage Management and the Architecture of Access
- Kiing Curry
- Jun 2
- 6 min read
"The ability to understand that smooth experiences do not happen naturally.
They are designed."
I Know Tings explores neurodivergence, OCD, autism, embodiment, plant medicine, regulation, memory, and the many ways the body communicates before language arrives. These essays trace signals that are often dismissed, pathologized, or misunderstood, asking what becomes possible when we learn to listen to the body’s own ways of knowing.
On Stage Management and the Architecture of Access
People often tell me I am organized.
I understand why.
I hold multiple degrees. I have managed productions. I have built workshops, websites, classrooms, events, businesses, books, jewelry collections, and an entire speculative cosmology called the Bespokecurry Cosmos.
From the outside it can look like organization.
Color-coded folders.
Calendars.
Spreadsheets.
Production schedules.
Prompt books.
Cue sheets.
The illusion of a person who simply enjoys structure.
But organization was never the point.
Survival was.
Long before I understood I was autistic. Long before I understood OCD. Long before I had language for disability. Long before I understood how often I was being forced to adapt to systems that were not built for me.
I became very good at noticing things.
The speaker placed directly beside the backstage table.
The actor who was about to have a meltdown.
The missing prop.
The schedule conflict nobody had accounted for.
The tension growing between collaborators before the argument happened.
The production manager forgetting to communicate information that would create chaos three weeks later.
The audience flow issue.
The accessibility issue.
The problem behind the problem.
People called this organization.
What it actually was was environmental awareness.
I became a stage manager because stage management rewarded skills I had already spent my life developing.
The ability to perceive relationships.
The ability to anticipate friction.
The ability to hold large systems in my head simultaneously.
The ability to understand that smooth experiences do not happen naturally.
They are designed.
What fascinated me about theatre was never the spotlight.
It was the invisible architecture holding the spotlight up.
Most people see a performance.
A stage manager sees conditions.
A chair placed six inches too far downstage.
An entrance that arrives three seconds too late.
A lighting cue.
A costume preset.
A communication chain.
A contingency plan.
The audience experiences magic.
The stage manager experiences infrastructure.
I was good at that work.
Very good.
And yet I eventually found myself pushed away from the industry.
For years I struggled to understand why.
The answer became clearer only after my autism diagnosis.
The very traits that made me exceptional at the work were often the same traits institutions struggled to accommodate.
The hyper-awareness.
The sensitivity.
The need for clarity.
The desire for communication.
The ability to perceive complexity.
Organizations were happy to benefit from those capacities.
They were less enthusiastic about supporting the person carrying them.
This is not unique to theatre.
In fact, I now think it is one of the central contradictions of accessibility work.
Many institutions consume accessibility while refusing to acknowledge the labor that creates it.
When a performance runs smoothly, people assume it happened naturally.
When a workshop feels welcoming, people assume it happened naturally.
When an event feels organized, people assume it happened naturally.
Nobody sees the labor required to build conditions where people can thrive.
And because the labor remains invisible, the people performing it often become invisible as well.
For a long time I thought accessibility was primarily about physical access.
Ramps.
Elevators.
Accessible bathrooms.
These things matter.
They save lives.
But my understanding of accessibility has expanded dramatically over the years.
Accessibility is also communication.
Accessibility is predictability.
Accessibility is preparation.
Accessibility is sensory awareness.
Accessibility is reducing unnecessary uncertainty.
Not every person entering a room is entering from the same place.
Some people arrive already exhausted.
Some people arrive overstimulated.
Some people arrive masking.
Some people arrive carrying trauma.
Some people arrive managing chronic pain.
Some people arrive navigating neurodivergence.
Some people arrive calculating every variable in order to feel safe enough to participate.
And yet most event planning assumes a mythical participant.
A normal participant.
A participant who can adapt endlessly.
A participant who requires nothing.
Recently I found myself creating a technical rider for workshops through BlaxkCurry Productions.
When most people hear the phrase technical rider, they imagine absurd celebrity requests.
A particular brand of bottled water.
Imported flowers.
Furniture specifications.
The mythology of the diva.
What I discovered while building ours was something very different.
I was asking for things like:
Who is our point of contact?
Where do we unload supplies?
Can we access the room early?
Will we be located beside loud speakers?
What supplies are being provided?
Who should we call if something changes?
In other words, I was asking for information.
I was asking for clarity.
I was asking for conditions that would allow us to arrive prepared rather than overwhelmed.
And I noticed something fascinating.
After years of minimizing my needs, these requests felt extravagant.
The requests themselves were completely reasonable.
But asking for them felt radical.
That realization revealed something uncomfortable.
Many of us have become so accustomed to inaccessible systems that basic access feels excessive.
We have confused preparation with privilege.
We have confused communication with entitlement.
We have confused accommodation with special treatment.
The rider taught me something else as well.
For years my spouse and I facilitated events while absorbing enormous amounts of preventable stress.
Pop-ups.
Markets.
Workshops.
Community events.
Many of them happened during periods of intense instability in our lives.
Including periods when we were homeless.
We would arrive overstimulated.
Leave exhausted.
Sometimes argue afterward.
At the time it felt personal.
Now I understand it differently.
The nervous systems involved were carrying more labor than the event itself required.
The problem was not us.
The problem was missing infrastructure.
Every difficult event became data.
Every chaotic setup revealed a missing system.
Every communication breakdown revealed a missing process.
Every accessibility issue revealed a missing question.
The rider became the accumulation of those lessons.
A document shaped by lived experience.
Not a list of demands.
A map.
A teaching tool.
An operating manual.
And perhaps that is why creating it felt strangely familiar.
Because I have been building operating manuals my entire life.
Theatre taught me how.
Autism refined the skill.
Disability deepened the necessity.
The Bespokecurry Cosmos expanded the framework.
What I once called stage management now appears everywhere in my work.
The website.
The workshops.
The courses.
The essays.
The social media systems.
The visual archives.
The event packets.
All of them are asking the same question.
What conditions allow people to arrive as themselves?
That is the question underneath accessibility.
Not how do we force bodies to adapt.
Not how do we create the appearance of inclusion.
But how do we build conditions where participation becomes possible?
How do we create enough clarity that creativity can emerge?
Enough structure that people can breathe?
Enough communication that people can belong?
The irony is that many people perceive these systems as restrictive.
I have found the opposite to be true.
Structure is often what creates freedom.
When the nervous system is not fighting chaos, it can finally engage possibility.
The show can begin.
The workshop can begin.
The conversation can begin.
The body can arrive.
And perhaps that is the deepest lesson stage management ever taught me.
The audience remembers the performance.
The stage manager remembers the conditions that made the performance possible.
Increasingly, I believe those conditions are where accessibility lives.
Not in the spotlight.
But in the architecture surrounding it.
On Stage Management and the Architecture of Access
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