Listen to this post:

I met Mike Burns in 2001 working on Actual Lives Austin, which is “Central Texas’ own and only ensemble dedicated to crip theatre with attitude.”

Here is Mike’s blog called “Adventures of a Superhero”: www.superhero333.tumblr.com. And here is a beautiful short film he made.

In the film, you see the Actual Lives Austin folks on a bus headed to the Kennedy Center to perform at the 2004 International VSA Arts Festival.

I had moved to Portland in 2003. When I found out the troupe was off to Washington D.C. for this huge event, I flew across the country to watch the performance. After all, working backstage all the time, I had never actually seen an Actual Lives performance from the audience.

They ended up being short-handed backstage, and I went right to work on my old stage-hand duties. So I didn’t see that performance either, but I could hear the audience’s huge, joyful response!

Mike is very interested in sharing the Good News. His spiritual side gives him ideas for art, and his physical side creates the art. In this way, art integrates his life, his activities, and his interactions with God. He hopes that through art, people will see how capable, talented, and whole people with brain injuries are.

Currently, he is starting to make plans to publish his artwork in a book. He’s looking into funding possibilities to help make that happen. If you’ve got any great leads, send them my way. I will share them with Mike so that he can continue to share his artwork.