Overview:
Local actress Regan Linton has dedicated her life to debunking outdated stereotypes about what people with disabilities can accomplish.
Regan Linton, a well-known actress from Denver, persevered when life threw her a massive challenge. After a life-altering car accident left her paralyzed from the waist down in 2002, she made a commitment to keep creating.
On March’s episode of the “Bucket List Community News Podcast,” we sat down with Linton to talk about her journey as a disabled actress, work as an activist, the inspiration behind some of her most known work and where her projects will take her next.
“When I was at USC in Los Angeles, I was paralyzed in a car crash and that completely shifted everything that I thought I was going to do with my life,” Linton told us. “I fortunately found my way back to the arts and I found a new purpose in performing, writing and directing.”
Linton, an actress in a wheelchair, has challenged the status quo of acting and paved the way for other disabled actors. She hasn’t let her disability hold her back but instead has used it as an asset within storytelling to help connect with audiences.
“My instrument is just different,” Linton said. “I sit in a manual wheelchair that I wheel around, but that also gives me a lot of power in different ways to communicate a story in ways that others can’t.”
Linton says the biggest challenge she has and continues to tackle is squashing the preconceived notions of what a disabled person is capable of within the arts.
“There are a lot of environmental barriers, but a lot of them are attitudinal barriers,” Linton said. “People have been conditioned into thinking that I, using a wheelchair, should fit a certain mold or role in society. And I don’t necessarily fit that.”
The preconceived notions that Linton is fighting against can be so deep-rooted and harmful that she says she sometimes feels the need to remind others that she’s human too, just like them.
“I used to say that when I would go into an audition, I’d have three or four minutes to convince them I was the right actor for the role,” Linton said. “But in that same four minutes, I am trying to convince them that I am a human being that’s worth being alive because they’re coming in with their own preconceptions about disability itself.”
Alongside Phamaly Theatre Company in Denver, the nation’s longest-running disability-affirmative theater group, Linton and other artists are battling those preconceptions. Following her injury, Linton performed in her first show with the company, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” in 2005.
“When I first started looking at what my opportunities were [after the accident], there was nothing and it was very depressing,” Linton said. “Thankfully, here in Denver, right in our own backyard, there is Phamaly Theatre Company. They were really who helped me transform my idea of what was possible as an actor with a disability.”
In 2016, Linton was appointed the nonprofit’s artistic director, becoming the company’s first disabled artistic director and the nation’s first wheelchair user to run a theater company. Though she left the company in 2021 to pursue acting opportunities and do more national disability advocacy, Linton continues to champion Phamaly’s mission.
“It’s very gratifying [to see more disabled actors on stage],” Linton said. “Being able to see someone who looks like you, who moves like you, who can relate to you and things that you’ve gone through, and then see these possibilities of things they’re doing that you don’t really see, it’s revolutionary for any of us. It’s forging new possibilities that we typically aren’t really exposed to.”
Since working with Phamaly, Linton has traveled the country working on countless other artistic projects. One of her more recent projects was writing and directing an episode of “Reframed: Next Gen Narratives,” which is streaming on Max. In her episode, Linton reimagines the classic story of “Jack and the Beanstalk” to tackle topics like discrimination against disabled people in the workplace.
“The film is about this issue of subminimum wages,” Linton said. “Which is still very much on the books as law, which says you can pay people less than minimum wage if they have a disability, regardless of the job. I thought it was really important to elevate that issue because most people don’t know that that is a reality.”
Along with writing and directing “Reframed,” Linton also wrote and directed a documentary about Phamaly Theater Company titled “imperfect,” about her experience directing the musical “Chicago.” Currently, Linton is collaborating with the Buntport Theater Company in Denver for a new show called “The Menagerist” until March 29, which tackles some harmful stereotypes about disability in the theater industry.
“‘The Menagerist’ is a satirical take of Tennessee Williams’ ‘The Glass Menagerie,” Linton said. “The problem is that narrative at its core is problematic. … We decided to take that on and poke some fun and build it into an absurdist retelling that very overtly challenges some of those disability stereotypes.”
23 years after her accident, and countless projects later, Linton says she now views being paralyzed as an asset that has made her feel more liberated as an artist since she doesn’t have to fit the impossible molds that other artists are forced to conform to.
“I describe my injury or disability in a way that people don’t think of as a disability, which is liberating,” Linton said. “I feel like after my injury, it really allowed me to say, ‘Oh great, I don’t have to fit into any sort of mold anymore’ because I’m not going to fit most of the molds that are out there.”
