In the final scene of A.B.L.E.’s punk-rock adaptation of Frankenstein, Benjamin Collins triumphantly grinned at the audience as he crowd-surfed offstage in the arms of his castmates, while Zachary Wandel performed a heartfelt rendition of “Creep” by Radiohead. The two actors shared the role of the Creature in this original retelling of Mary Shelley’s novel, with Wandel appearing in present-day scenes and Collins in flashbacks. Together, they portrayed this often-misunderstood character as sensitive, empathetic, and curious for three sold-out houses in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s black-box venue during the final weekend of April.
This moment was a decade in the making. In 2014, Jacob Collins, Benjamin’s father and a longtime volunteer at A.B.L.E., first suggested that the ensemble should make a monster movie based on classic films such as Frankenstein and Dracula. His idea was to tell a story about “what it means to be scapegoated and what it means to have prejudice against you and to be underestimated,” explained Katie Yohe, co-founder and executive director of A.B.L.E., or Artists Breaking Limits and Expectations—a Chicago-based nonprofit providing performing arts experiences for people with Down syndrome and other intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD).
Jacob passed in 2023 but his idea lived on. Yohe and teaching artist Lawrence Kern pitched a Frankenstein stage production to the Program Advisory Council, a group of four actors with I/DD, two parents, and two volunteers who collectively shape A.B.L.E.’s programming decisions. The council chose to include Frankenstein in the 2024-25 season, with Yohe and Kern adapting and co-directing the production. But A.B.L.E. decided to do more than simply stage it; the company also piloted a new structure for its production process, introducing group auditions, longer rehearsals, and a full weekend run of performances rather than the usual one-off finale. The ultimate goal is to develop a producing ensemble to perform A.B.L.E. shows on tour, offering professional opportunities for actors and positively influencing public perceptions of artists with disabilities.
“[A.B.L.E.] is a social outlet as much as it is a creative outlet,” said Yohe. “There are so few opportunities for folks—especially once they’ve aged out of the school system, they might not have any accessible, affordable programming at all, let alone something that lets them really get into expressing themselves. So we honor that this is a place to be building relationships and to have a social connection first, and then the creative stuff is like the icing on the cake.” For ensemble members “who really are there for that creative purpose,” Frankenstein was a chance “to go a little deeper.”
Founded in 2010, A.B.L.E. originated as a teen drama troupe at the Chicago branch of GiGi’s Playhouse, an international network that offers therapeutic, educational, and career training programs for individuals with Down syndrome. After several years of rapid growth, the volunteer-led group parted ways with GiGi’s in 2014, was fiscally sponsored by Chicago Children’s Theatre for a year, then became a 501(c)3 in 2016. Today, A.B.L.E.’s multiple teen and adult ensembles, together with a staff of teaching artists and volunteer facilitators, create and perform in a range of theatre and film projects, from adaptations of classic plays to original devised stories.
A.B.L.E’s production process is highly collaborative, with actors helping to devise scenes, develop choreography, and write parts of the script. After holding group auditions for Frankenstein last November, Kern and Yohe drafted the script around the individual strengths of each actor who was cast, with the punk setting intended to honor the rebellious spirit of the disability community. With only about two-thirds of the show written before rehearsals began, the neurodiverse nine-actor ensemble—a mix of relative newcomers and longtime A.B.L.E. members ranging in age from 23 to 42—created their version of Frankenstein alongside the directors and four facilitators over the course of eight three-hour rehearsals from February through April. While the final version isn’t an exact realization of Jacob’s vision, it’s “definitely an homage” to it, and gets at the heart of the same themes, Yohe said. “We are definitely a Creature-centric adaptation of Frankenstein.”
The play opens in a defunct rock venue called The Arctic, where a journalist named Roberta Walton (Ryan Foley) visits to report on the club’s closing. However, she soon finds a more interesting story with the arrival of scientist Victor Frankenstein (played by Marissa Bloodgood in The Arctic scenes), who’s desperately searching for the Creature he created and abandoned, leading to the deaths of Victor’s family and friends. After hearing his side of the story (with Andrew Kosnik playing Victor in flashbacks), Walton reveals that she has already spoken with the Creature, and the action rewinds to the Creature’s first breath and proceeds from his point of view.
Contrary to most on-screen portrayals of the Creature, Shelley never called him a monster in her original novel; only other characters use that word, Yohe pointed out. As anyone who’s read the book knows, the Creature is intelligent, eloquent, and very human in his emotions and desires. Following in Shelley’s footsteps, A.B.L.E.’s production emphasized the Creature’s sensitivity, the way society ostracizes him, and his dream of sharing his life with a partner who understands him.
Many of the cast members related to the Creature’s experiences of being misunderstood and mistreated. Cast member Erin Harvey said that people tend to underestimate her because she looks younger than she is, so she understands how the Creature feels when people judge him by his appearance. “I can also relate to the Creature because I used to be bullied in my youth, because I was different,” she shared during a rehearsal break in early April.
Wandel said that playing the Creature was “an honor,” but added that he found it taxing to explore the character’s more painful feelings. “When I go home, I feel so emotional,” he said. Like Harvey, Wandel’s own memories of being treated poorly helped him connect to the Creature. “I know how the Creature feels, and I know what my feelings are, and being a Creature is very hard, but also—hey, it’s part of the show business,” he said. “I have to learn these feelings, and I’m very happy to express these feelings because I’m a strong person.”
Another aspect of the Creature’s journey that many cast members connected with was his desire for a partner. In one encounter with Victor, the Creature begs his creator to make a partner like himself, promising to leave Victor and his family alone forever if he can have just one companion. After a thoughtful discussion among the ensemble about what it means to have a partner, Wandel wrote the Creature’s monologue for this scene.
“I think the Creature wants to have someone to be connected [with] and wants to have a partner to understand, to be in love or have a friend to talk [to] about a lot of things,” Wandel reflected. “It would be amazing if the Creature [were to] have a friend or have a loved one.”
In addition to discussing character hopes and dreams, each A.B.L.E. rehearsal is structured with a variety of activities to help ensemble members get to know each other better, ponder the show’s themes, explore their characters’ personality traits, and incorporate movement and music into their performances. Every A.B.L.E. activity is designed to be as accessible as possible for the actors, teaching artists, facilitators, and audience members. Before each rehearsal and performance, the staff prepares a detailed document called a “social story,” with a step-by-step visual and written breakdown of what participants can expect that day. (As someone who gets nervous about navigating new locations and has social anxiety, I personally found these documents helpful for my on-site reporting.)
Upon arriving at rehearsal, each participant places their photo on a color-coded ensemble board to show how they are feeling that day, with such options as happy, ready to work, tired, sad, nervous, silly, or angry. The board helps everyone to check in with their own emotions and communicate their needs to others throughout the rehearsal. Other accessibility features include visual aids to accommodate various communication styles and sensory support tools for anyone who needs help focusing.
Instead of asking actors to memorize their lines, A.B.L.E. uses a method called “dropping in.” Each actor is partnered with a facilitator who has a script in hand and reads their lines in small sections; the actor then repeats the lines, adding their own dramatic flair. Dropping in allows everyone to fully participate, regardless of literacy and verbalization levels, and frees the actors to focus on their expressive choices.
At A.B.L.E. performances, the audience environment is considered relaxed, meaning that attendees may leave and reenter the theatre or move around in a designated zone as needed. Wheelchair access, open captioning, ASL interpretation, a sensory advisory guide, and mask requirements are several other ways that the company supports audience accessibility.
When I attended the second of three Frankenstein performances, I was truly impressed by what the ensemble had accomplished in just eight weeks. Several of the most moving scenes were choreographed sequences devised by the ensemble, such as a family vignette featuring Colleen Altman, Rachel Buchanan, Matthew La Chapelle, Collins, and Wandel, and a later scene in which Victor creates and destroys the Creature’s partner (played by Harvey). The impact of these scenes was a testament to the success of A.B.L.E.’s collaborative method.
As I followed the production process, I was touched by the camaraderie among the ensemble, some of whom have known each other for years and others who were new to this particular group. Each rehearsal includes a discussion prompt, and whenever an actor shared a deeply vulnerable response, they were met with empathy and encouragement from their castmates. Other moments when actors offered emotional support, cheered each other on, and resolved minor tensions showed the genuine care fostered among A.B.L.E. members.
Almost every cast member I interviewed mentioned the strong sense of community as one of their favorite things about A.B.L.E. Harvey said that A.B.L.E. offers “acceptance” to everyone and feels “like a team.” Bloodgood added, “I feel like I need A.B.L.E. because I want to include more people. I’ve been talking [to] my other friends outside A.B.L.E., and I’ve been telling them to join, because I want to include them, to bring them into our community.”
La Chapelle reflected on his experience not only as an actor but also as a creative associate, a staff position that employs longtime ensemble members to co-lead A.B.L.E.’s outreach programs. “I’ve grown as an actor [and] also a creative associate, [and] I think of Katie and Lawrence as a brother and a sister to me,” he said. “I take that very personally in my heart, in my soul.”
As A.B.L.E. looks to the future, they plan to maintain this people-centric approach while strengthening the organization’s sustainability and growing its connections both with Chicago and with the disability community. In August 2024, the company’s board of directors ratified a five-year strategic plan oriented around these goals. But Yohe noted that A.B.L.E. faces a range of challenges and uncertainty due to factors such as a volatile philanthropic landscape, federal funding cuts to arts programs and disability support, and the rise of harmful rhetoric about people with disabilities.
“The whole ecosystem is really scary right now, because disability seems to be very targeted by this administration,” she said. “I think we’re going to have to be ready to stand our ground [to defend] that what we’re doing is important and valuable, and that the people that we work with are deserving of these opportunities.”
If all goes to plan with the producing ensemble, she hopes touring A.B.L.E. shows will help change hearts and minds.
“I think that the more people get to see folks with disabilities, the easier it is to have those conversations, because the reality is they were locked away for such a long time,” Yohe said. “We didn’t talk about it, and even now, kids are told, ‘Don’t look, don’t stare, don’t talk about it, don’t ask questions.’ And I think if we can just normalize, ‘Here’s a body and a different way of being in a body,’ I think it opens those conversations.
“Hopefully, the more we’re able just to be out there, the conversations can happen around us and because of us and with us, and we can gently chip away and change the corners that we can change.”
Emily McClanathan is a Chicago-based writer whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Playbill, INTO, and more. She is a 2020 National Critics Institute Fellow.
