Jenna Bainbridge made Broadway history in 2024 when she became the first wheelchair user to originate a role in a new musical as part of the Suffs cast. In 2025, she made history again as the first authentically-cast disabled actor to play the role of Nessarose in Wicked at the Gershwin Theater.
Bainbridge has been performing onstage since the age of 12. She won the Best of Westward award for Best Actress in a Musical in 2010 and has been nominated for five Colorado Theatre Guild “Henry” Awards for roles in Urinetown, Sideshow, Beauty and the Beast, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jesus Christ Superstar.
An ambulatory wheelchair user, Bainbridge is a fierce advocate for accessibility in the arts. She co-founded CONSULTABlLITY, which helps theater companies assess and address their inaccessibility to become more equitable and inclusive spaces. Some of the company’s past clients include The Actor’s Equity Association, The New Group, Rutgers University, and the ReelAbilities Film Festival.
“Because I use a wheelchair, architecture can be a massive barrier for me to interact safely with the world,” Bainbridge told Able News. Reflecting on how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has impacted her life, she shared: “Without the ADA, I wouldn’t have been able to get the training I needed to get to Broadway, much less be able to actually enter a Broadway theater as the vast majority were completely inaccessible to wheelchair users before the passage of the ADA—both on stage and off.”
Bainbridge also shines a spotlight on how the existence of the ADA positively impacts the work environment for her nondisabled co-workers, too.
“[They’re] able to ask for reasonable accommodations in their job. This can be something as small as getting new shoes for their costume that allow them to dance easier and keep their body supported and safe, or to alter choreography or singing slightly to allow for their access needs on any given day. This is the ADA at work, even if we don’t think of it as such. Access benefits everyone.”
Read all 35 stories of the New York-based leaders profiled in our ADA 35 edition.