OPrak’s Take on Using the Term Interabled
In May we were prepping for a June workshop of La Sonnambula, integrating classic opera and American Sign Language. Our awesome Social Media Coordinator, José Alba Rodriguez, created an Instagram posting that addressed a question we often get; “What does interabled mean?”
Interabled:
Work-related relationships across differing abilities
If you've spent time in disability communities, you've probably encountered the word "interabled." It's most often used to describe romantic relationships between a disabled person and their non-disabled partner — a term coined to name a specific kind of intimacy, one that exists across a difference in ability.
At Opera Praktikos, we choose to use the word differently. We've borrowed it, stretched it, and put it to work describing something we think captures the essence of how we operate: the working relationships that form when people with widely varying abilities create art together.
Why OPrak wanted a word for the way we work together
The work we do at OPrak brings together people with different bodies, different sensory experiences, different processing styles and needs: a performer who is Deaf; a singer with Cerebral Palsy; a producer who uses a wheelchair; a stage manager - paralyzed on one side - who hauls chairs, marks the stage and calls the show. None of these differences are incidental to the work — they shape how we operate! Who we work with influences how we operate, how we choose rehearsal and venue space, what repertoire we present, how we communicate and build trust while driving our vision to the stage in high form, on time and on budget.
We kept reaching for phrases to describe this way of working: "cross-disability collaboration," "mixed-ability ensemble," "inclusive working relationship." All of them accurate but they lacked warmth. They described policy, they did not convey the relationships required to make really good opera.
"Interabled" already had the warmth we were looking for. It was built to name a bond between people who relate to each other across a difference in ability, rather than in spite of it or around it. That's exactly the kind of relationship we believe a good work of collaborative art is built on. So I asked my partner-in-opera Greg Moomjy: what if we let the word expand its meaning and use it for professional relationships too? Because that is the relationship we have.
From the Bedroom to the Green Room
Now I want to be mindful of what I’m saying here and respectful of our source material. Interabled originally described romantic and intimate partnerships between a person with a disability and person without a disability. This is exquisite, and we celebrate interabled couples the world over. What we're proposing is an extension of what’s behind the word: the same underlying idea, applied to a professional closeness. Greg and I are business partners and very dear friends. There is great love and an intellectual intimacy between us, not a romance. We share a linked mind in many ways as we make critical OPrak decisions together. There are things Greg can do that I can’t, and there are things I can do that Greg can’t and the dance we do every day is one neither of us can do without the other.
Because that's really what an opera company is, at its best — a set of intense, high-trust, high-stakes relationships between people who need each other to succeed. A conductor and a singer with low vision have to build an interabled trust, just like a stage director and a performer with a limb-difference have to build an interabled shorthand for blocking. The chemistry isn't romantic, but it is more than just professional courtesy. It's something closer to an intimate partnership with respectful boundaries and clearly defined lines of communication. "Interabled" names that partnership honestly, instead of shrouding it in sanitized HR language.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Calling our work "interabled" isn't just a rebrand — it’s how we build productions:
Casting and creative teams are built around relationship, not accommodation. We don't ask "how do we accommodate this artist's disability?" We ask "What do you need?” and “How do these two artists, with their particular abilities, build a working relationship that makes the scene strong?"
Access is mutual, not one-directional. In an interabled relationship, both people adapt. An autistic conductor and a Deaf performer adapt to each other’s needs and way of working; neither side is simply "helping" the other.
Difference is treated as a creative resource. The varying ways our artists sense rhythm, breath, and space aren't obstacles to get around — they often produce staging and musical choices. These can be choices a temporarily-non-disabled-only ensemble [more on that in another posting] would never have the capability of finding out about in the first place.
An Invitation,
Not a Rule
We don't expect "interabled" to replace every other term used across the disability arts field, and we're not claiming ownership of the word. We're offering one way of thinking about it, shaped by what we've learned in our own experience producing opera over the last five years. If it's useful to other companies building mixed-ability ensembles, we'd love to hear how you're using it too.
Opera is about passionate relationships and strong emotions being sung out-loud for an enraptured audience. Ours just happen to be interabled.
MMN
