In the final months of the Fellowship, the 2026 TYA/USA Emerging Leader Fellows reflect on their research trips and how the experience has impacted their TYA practice.

In my third year as a theatre teacher for middle school students, I collaborated with my school’s special education department to develop an adaptive theatre class for the special education students at my school. Before beginning this new journey, I had no experience in special education or sensory theatre.

Before this fellowship, I understood theatre as something flexible, but I imagined a stage, performers, and an audience. In Chicago, I discovered that theatre could happen beside a hospital bed, in an immersive sensory experience, or in a single moment between an artist and one child.

What happens when we stop asking young people to adapt to traditional theatre and begin creating theatre that adapts to them?

This fellowship taught me that sensory theatre is not a lesser or simplified version of theatre. It is a form of theatre that offers young people agency, belonging, and the freedom to experience theatre in their own ways.

Through my fellowship with TYA/USA, I travelled to visit Chicago Children’s Theatre to learn about The Red Kite Project – a series of unique and innovative programs for youth on the autism spectrum, young people with developmental disabilities and other accessibility needs and their families. During my visit, CCT hosted their first Chicago Theatre Sensory Summit for theater professionals, teaching artists, educators and disability advocates interested in increasing accessibility and engagement in the live performing arts. At the summit I attended workshops on multisensory play in bedside theatre, ground work for creatives, and the highlight of my experience: the Hunter Heartbeat Method Weekend Intensive.

Discovering and learning more about pediatric bedside theatre expanded my idea of what theatre is. A performance does not become smaller because it is created for one child. Its intimacy can make it even more powerful. Something I really began to understand about sensory theatre is how it can return a sense of choice, connection, and wonder to young audiences. During my final weekend, I participated in the Hunter Heartbeat Method Intensive – a series of sensory games based on Shakespeare and created by and developed with autistic people around the world. We spent the first half of each day learning the basics of the sensory games. During the second half, we applied what we learned while working with participants with autism.

Being able to apply these techniques and witness what these sensory games could do for participants further expanded (and exploded) my definition of theatre and my understanding of what sensory theatre could be. I was also faced with how challenging this work can be for everyone involved because it directly defies much of what we have been taught about traditional theatre.

Agency in theatre can look like choosing whether to enter or observe, moving freely through the space, or stepping away and returning. Neurodiverse people are often expected to adjust themselves to environments that were not designed for them. Sensory theatre reverses that expectation by creating an environment that listens and responds to the child. It gives agency back to young people by offering them genuine choices about how, when, and whether they participate.

This was something I struggled with during the first semester of my adaptive theatre class. My students did not always react or participate in the ways I expected them to. However, I learned that agency in sensory theatre can look like a multitude of things. Participation does not have to look the same for every student to be meaningful. When I brought this work back home, I focused on identifying adaptive practices that genuinely worked and prioritizing the process while still creating joyful productions. In my classroom, there is now a big difference from where we started together. My students have more agency, joy, and play. I developed more confidence in my ability as a teaching artist and in my understanding of sensory theatre. I also learned how important it is to have a community grounded in love and understanding.

This realization led me to Big Heart Theater, a Dallas-based theater for creative people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Big Heart Theater focuses on empowering teens and adults with IDD to create and perform one-of-a-kind theatrical experiences for themselves and their communities. Through this fellowship, I finally gained the courage to reach out in the hopes that I could observe and learn more about their process while expanding my own practice. Through this connection, I volunteered in a summer production, and I have never had more fun on stage!

Although Big Heart Theater is not marketed as TYA, its shows are full of comedy, music, and joy. I think young audiences would love to see these productions. The amazing actors at Big Heart Theater inspire me, and I know they will inspire my students. Their work affirms that theatre is forever, even outside of Mrs. Gordon’s classroom.

My fellowship did more than introduce me to new practices. It changed the way I understand theatre.

If you are an educator, teaching artist, artistic director, or theatre professional, we need more sensory and adaptive theatre for TYA audiences. Theatre can happen on a stage, in a classroom, beside a hospital bed, or inside a sensory world created for one child. It can be loud or quiet, spoken or nonverbal, devised or shaped by the choice of its audience. Sensory and adaptive theatre are not alternatives to “real” theatre. They invite us into richer, more expansive versions grounded in agency, connection, and belonging. Every child deserves access to that experience. Every child deserves to enter a theatrical world and know: This was created with me in mind.

Author Trinity Gordon

Trinity Gordon

More Than a Stage: Rethinking Theatre through Access, Agency, and Joy