Ezzell Floranina and the Rainbow Players received a Summer 2012 grant to buy an iPad and a digital camera to document their trip to perform in the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics in London.

Ezzell, a theater compatriot of Emily’s, has been leading the Rainbow Players for 15 years.  The group, according to Ezzell, transforms ”the images and stigma of being labeled as ‘disabled’ or of being seen as ‘different.’”   The Players have been invited to be international partners/mentors with more than 200 other performers as part of the Cultural Olympiad, exploring the themes of justice, equality and fairness as the games open.  Ezzell writes:

The collaboration. . . speaks, through theater, to the bleak outlook of a future when one is labeled as “disabled” and has hopes and dreams like any other youth.  [It speaks] through the performance piece to a day when “all abilities will be seen as equal” and “gifted.”

It has been an honor and a privilege to accompany these individuals on the journey of self-advocacy and empowerment from a place of “no dreams” to “Dream A Big Dream,” our current production. 

The Players also are continuing to develop a separate work to tour to schools as a workshop/performance on “Bullying and the Bystander.”  The first version of this work was performed in Chicago in Summer 2011 at the International Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference.

We awarded this grant to Ezzell and the Rainbow Players out of respect for their body of work and with shared excitement at their invitation to perform as the Olympics open in London, which was like a second home to Emily.  We also awarded it to honor Chris Wood, one of the Players, for his long-time devotion to theater and in recognition of the many Amherst Community Theater shows in which he and Emily performed together.