In early August I flew out to Denver, Colorado, to see the world premiere of a play—504: The Musical, produced and performed by the Phamaly Theatre Company, an all-disability company that has been creating high-caliber disability-centered theater since 1989.
I’d heard the highest praise for Phamaly from actor Jenna Bainbridge, an alum who is currently playing Nessarose in the musical Wicked on Broadway. I knew that Phamaly was a large enough organization to have a staff publicist, with funding sufficient to book the run of the show right in the heart of downtown Denver. But something shifted after I checked into my hotel and went to the corner diner (Sam’s No. 3) for a bite to eat. There in the menu was an insert about 504 and Phamaly, with a selection of food items named for tunes from the show!
I have to confess that the menu insert made me positively giddy. I am old enough to remember the 1977 504 Regs sit-ins. My pioneering disability-activist parents were friends with several of its principals, particularly Eunice Fiorito, who was a guest at my bar mitzvah in 1971. As a writer, I’m used to thinking of disability history as a subject that lives largely inside my head. But now, having just landed in Denver to attend a premiere celebrating those long-ago events, I found commercial recognition of that very same history! What would my parents and their tiny band of colleagues have made of that?
The play is a fictionalized telling of 1977’s famed 25-day occupation by disability protesters of the federal office building in San Francisco, California. Beginning on April 5 of that year, disabled activists led protests and sit-ins at federal offices around the country, to push the government to enact regulations enforcing the potentially transformative Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Most of those actions only lasted a few days, but in San Francisco the protesters logged the longest-ever peaceful occupation against the federal government. The protesters did not quit until their demands had been met and the 504 regulations were signed. Section 504 and the 1977 regulations became fundamental parts of American life and paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Led by Judy Heumann and Kitty Cone, the 504 Regs sit-in in San Francisco remains one of the signal events in disability history. Forty-nine years later, it has received a musical all its own.
504: The Musical tells the tale of a group of strangers-turned mass protesters-turned political power players. The bones of the real events are captured, including the government’s ham-handed suppression efforts—cutting off telephone, electricity and deliveries of food and medicine—and the responses: deaf protesters communicating with the outside world by signing through the windows, and deliveries of supplies by the Black Panthers.
It is definitely a fictionalized telling. The leader of the protest, June, is cobbled together from Judy Heumann and Kitty Cone. Even her name is a portmanteau of JUdy and coNE. The characters represent all parts of the disability community: wheelchair users, a crutch walker, a blind person, a deaf person, a developmentally disabled person, a deinstitutionalized person, allies and relatives, and so forth. Several different racial and ethnic minorities are included as well, but playwright Abbie Goldberg has developed the characters and their relationships well past merely serving as archetypes. The story evolves over the long, uncertain and dreary 25-day occupation, during which these strangers develop into a community and a self-conscious political force. And in the end, they travel to Washington to see the regs get signed into law. The play ends on a note of intense celebration, with snips of archival audio from Kitty Cone.
Phamaly’s cast turns in uniformly convincing and gripping performances, displaying a remarkable ability, as the director Ben Raanan put it, to “be effortlessly vulnerable, to pour their hearts out onstage.” Most of the cast members get a feature, and every single one of them blows it out of the water. In considerable measure that is thanks to the score, composed by Mason McDowell, which reaches effectively into the struggles the characters have experienced in the nondisabled world, and is very capably delivered by a four-piece band.
As a work of theater art, 504: The Musical is a great success. The staging, lighting, sound design and accessibility features are smoothly polished. The production is set in an intimately scaled pentagonal theater space that works perfectly for this play. It felt as if I was sitting with the activists, as if I were a part of the action.
By the end of the evening my hands and voice were sore from applauding and cheering. So I’m afraid I can’t say much more from a theater-critic perspective. But in tracing the evolution of the protesters into a collective force, 504: The Musical offers lessons for us now, in the present.
The protesters of 1977 were subject to the far-off decisions of a not very engaged, sympathetic or even comprehending government. In our own time, we are similarly subject—to a government that has turned actively hostile. The hard-won regs the protesters fought for are under attack, most particularly by a lawsuit brought by Texas and other states. Many of the other victories painfully notched by the disability rights movement are receiving treatment from Washington that is best described as death by a thousand cuts.
In this context, 504: The Musical is THE play for our time. Not just history set to music, it is a tale of collective power that coalesced and changed the world. It should become the rallying point for our community, as we fight back against assaults happening right now, almost half a century later. 504 should be produced and re-produced all across the country.
You—yes you—should go see it. We should learn the play’s tunes and sing them together. At a 50th anniversary rally, next April.
504: The Musical, presented by the Phamaly Theater Company. Book and lyrics by Abbie Goldberg, music by Mason McDowell. Runtime approximately two hours ten minutes (with intermission). At the Kilstrom Theater, Denver, Colorado, through August 23, 2026. Theater space is fully accessible.
Thanks to Lily Blessing, Corinne Melon, Dallas Padoven, Ben Raanen, Trenton Schindele, Gregg Vigil.
For more of Warren Shaw’s work in disability history, please go to www.DisabilityHistoryNYC.com