Educational Media Reviews Online

This thirty-nine-minute-long documentary presents insight into the creative process behind the 2020 performance, We Love Like Barnacles: Crip Lives & Climate Chaos. A performance produced by Sins Invalid, “[...] a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists [...]” and defines “[...] disability broadly to include people with physical impairments, people who belong to a sensory minority, people with emotional disabilities, people with cognitive challenges, and those with chronic/severe illness [...]” In Loving with Three Hearts, the filmmakers mix performance and rehearsal footage with excerpts from related zoom calls, interviews, and conversations, to illuminate the process of creating and producing this collaborative performance during the pandemic. The film features diverse individual performances presented by diversely-abled creative artists who are united by a desire to share their work and the work of the others involved in this collaborative creation.

Explanatory text included onscreen early in the documentary reads: “The following performance includes conversations about loss and violence, capitalist greed, neglect of disabled people, loads of profanity, sexual content, community unity and love.” This is intriguing, but more development of these conversations and topics, along with more commentary by participating artists, seems necessary to clarify the film’s message and ensure the stated goals of the creators are met.

The strongest aspects of Loving with Three Hearts are the opportunities this film provides to hear from the creative team and view the performances discussed and featured. This, in turn, enables viewers to explore various perspectives and issues that they otherwise might not consider. Viewers are also likely to appreciate the discussions of challenges encountered while creating and sharing this theatrical performance during the pandemic and are likely to benefit from the opportunities this documentary provides to increase awareness of ableism and racism, along with other forms of bias, discrimination, and inequity. This film effectively drives home the importance of living with active empathy and of being proactive in ensuring that everyone’s access needs are identified and met. Viewers are likely to come away with an enhanced understanding of "disability" and may be motivated to behave more empathetically about this in the future.

Overall, Loving with Three Hearts is a thought-provoking exploration of a unique performance, with room for more development in some areas. Some of the language used may be unfamiliar to or considered objectionable by some audience members, but the film is suitable for viewers at the high school level and up. It provides insight into the experiences of working performance artists who are abled and disabled in various ways. This documentary will likely be of greatest interest to those in the fields of Performance Studies, Communication Studies, and Disabilities Studies.

Loving with Three Hearts is available in English, Spanish, and ASL, with optional Audio Description.

Published and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Anyone can use these reviews, so long as they comply with the terms of the license.