Theatre asks autistic boy to leave

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Exactly this, if those boys were making noise behind me I'd be really pissed off. Whether they were autistic or not.

My son(AS) and I particularly love the theatre in London and locally in Surrey but have never come across any negative situations. There are a history of AS actors/actresses in the family and though no-one likes to have their theatre experience disrupted, there will always be tolerance on our part if and when a child is involved, especially one with challenges.

For interest sake, thought I'd include the following:

When a similar situation occurred recently in London, I included the article on my blog and received the following kind response:
Article: "Theatre Accused Of Outrageous Discrimination Against Autistic Boy":
http://www.aspie-editorial.com/2011/08/ ... istic-boy/

Response: Ambassador Theatre Group Says:
August 8th, 2011 at 4:43 pm

AMBASSADOR THEATRE GROUP STATEMENT

We deeply regret any upset caused to the Morris family and would like to apologise for their bad experience last month at the Apollo Victoria in London.

We are grateful to them for highlighting an issue that goes to the very heart of our company’s mission to provide an excellent experience for all our patrons. We firmly believe that everyone has the right to access live theatre, regardless of ability or disability, and we especially welcome children and young people.

However, we must clarify two points of fact which have been overlooked in much of the coverage of this story.

- The sound engineer did not complain about Gregor Morris, but merely alerted venue staff that there was a disturbance in the auditorium as she was concerned that someone was ill.

- At no time were the Morris Family asked to leave the theatre. Mr Morris and his son left of their own accord, leaving his wife and daughter to watch the rest of the performance.

ATG firmly believes that no patron should ever be asked to leave one of its theatres as a direct consequence of their disability. In this instance, whilst the staff concerned did not actually ask the family to leave, the way in which the situation was handled clearly resulted in the family feeling that they had no option. This is wholly unacceptable and we have apologised unreservedly for the distress caused to the Morris family.

Whilst we have a comprehensive access policy and training programme, this incident has naturally caused us to review both to ensure that our training model is fit for purpose. This is underway now. We work with a number of disability organisations on an ongoing basis and will be seeking further advice from them as to how we can improve our staff training.

ATG’s Joint CEO and Head of Learning and Access have both been in regular contact with Mr Morris and we are now working towards a positive outcome, including looking at ways of raising awareness of the needs of visitors with disabilities including in theatres nationally, and improving our practice through engaging with charities who specialise in this field.

Ambassador Theatre Group

In the movei Fly Away starring Ashley Rickards as an Autistic teenager, Rickards character was in a cake shop and laughing loudly with her mother.

An older woman in the shop told her mother "you should be ashamed bringing your daughter in public"

I think NT people are very awkward around people with disabilities, they would (given the chance) rather have them out of sight and out of mind.

That is true to some degree. However, as an actor with an Aspie brain, if someone is disruptive while I'm performing, the train gets derailed, so to speak.

People can't control babies crying or when others call their cellphones, either, (actually they can, by turning the phone off) but in those cases people remove the source of the disruption. On the other side of the coin, I only remember one instance recently of someone with disabilities coming to our show, and she did make noises out of excitement, but it wasn't disruptive and she wasn't asked to leave.

In addition if the noise is an unintentional byproduct of excitement or enjoyment over the performance then it's mean spirited to ask the child or adult to leave the theater.

A good illustration is the children's matinee at the cinemas where the noise from all the children disrupts the movie experience but we totally understand as children are naturally inclined to move around and make a racket. All part of the ambiance

This story reveals a problem throughout the spectrum and many other things labelled as 'disablity', the people involved are never to blame. Sean Duffys lawyer tried to say the same when he used AS as an excuse to torment the families of dead teenagers.

Is this how Aspergers become accepted as the potentially talented and useful members of society we are?

The mother should have controlled her child, told him softly that he was being too loud and upsetting the other children. Instead the mother backed the child over authority, what a fine lesson to somebody liekly to be socially awkward for most of his life.

There is no information on the level of impairment the boy has to his language or intellect or reasoning. Some children may be too distracted by the environment to listen to parents in which case the mother may not have been in a position to control the boy while he remained in the theatre.

It would be fair that if a child became too loud then the parent would be expected to remove the child from the theatre till they calmed down. This applies to any child.

Hear ye hear ye. I know this is going to get me a lot of flack, but I am in complete support of the theatre.

"Well, my child has special needs". Guess what? Children with special needs, grow up to be adults with special needs as well. If your son is autistic, you ought be able to sympathize with the adults with people on the spectrum as well then. I have severe sensorary problems, and often, children crying (yes, even 'happy' cries) cause intense pain to my ears, which develoes into pretty severe headaches, and then those can lead to fainting, convulsions, or panic attacks.

I don't care of your kid has Autism, Asperger's, or whatever, or not. If they're misbehaving and disrupting others, take them outside. A disruption is a disruption.

Besides, a theatre is a private business (unless it's the community theatre, and those are a hit-or-miss on if they're really privately owned), they're within their rights to ask disruptive patrons to leave.