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LEWIS: Women's theater was my education...

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I'd never thought of myself as a feminist. Being a disabled girl, it is a big struggle to even think of yourself as a girl, as a woman.

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LEWIS: So I was very frightened by having any of that femininity taken away from me, because I was afraid that's what it would mean.

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I was already such a maverick. I had a master's in English, I had been working, like no one else in my family, and for many disabled girls, that's what happens.

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LEWIS: You are the only one to get an education; you are the one who leaves the state; you are the one who has a...

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because your expectations are not that you are going to be a mother or married, so you develop another way.

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LEWIS: I felt like, "Well, I've already done that. I don't need feminism. I've got a career."

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But this company that would take me in, the role that was open, was in a woman's play, and so...

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LEWIS: that was very illuminating to discover that I was part of a larger group, and that that didn't restrict my individuality. In fact, it informed it and made it larger.

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So, that idea that by identifying with a group, you become more of an individual. That was part of my experience in women's theater.

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LEWIS: And then performing in women's theater was discovering that there were all these people like me out there.

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That these things that I thought were my problem and my struggle through life, were collective, and therefore...

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LEWIS: if they were collective, we could change society. That whole model.

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So, I had learned that from women's theater and from feminism. So it was one reason I was more open and quick to jump into the opportunity of CIL...

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LEWIS: because I discovered that this thing I'd been afraid of all my life, disability, perhaps was going to turn around the same way for me.

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I was going to discover that actually I was more by accepting it, as opposed to stigmatized by accepting it.