Steve Sykes (he/his) is an actor, director, playwright and singer. He is also a straight, white cisgender man who is a wheelchair user. This places him at a unique intersection of privilege and disadvantage, a fact he was keenly aware of when he applied for the position of 2024 Our Stage / Our Voices Artist-in-Residence.
Steve first caught the theater bug at ten years old when he saw a production of Hello, Dolly! on board the SS Norway. Shortly thereafter, he was cast as FDR in a magnet school production of Annie – a role he would revisit several times – and he continued learning his craft in high school. Playing Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music his junior year cemented his love for acting.
His community theater debut was in the summer of 1993 as a chorus member in Hans Christian Andersen at Springfield Muni Opera, where he became the first full-time wheelchair user to appear on the Muni stage. More milestones would follow, as he became the first ever wheelchair user to be flown by the renowned Flying by Foy company in a Muni production of The Wizard of Oz. Three years later, he would become the first wheelchair user to be cast as a Muni lead in 42nd Street. Other favorite roles include Henry Higgins in Lincoln Community Theater’s My Fair Lady (he’d later play Col. Pickering at the Springfield Theatre Centre), Willy Wonka in STC’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and an apostle in the Muni’s Godspell.
Steve has also directed several area productions, including STC’s Winnie the Pooh and Evita, as well as independent productions of The Bald Soprano and Mr. Barry’s Etchings. More recently, he has focused on playwriting, and his 10-minute play Lost Cause was performed as part of the 2023 Our Stage/Our Voices program.
In 2020, Steve branched into podcasting as part of the Front Row Network. On his show, “View From the Back Row,” he and his guests look at movies and TV through the lens of disability inclusion and representation. Previous episodes of the podcast have looked at films from Wait Until Dark to Avatar to examine how disabled characters in these films are portrayed. He has also interviewed disabled performers and artists including Diane Franklin (The Last American Virgin, Better Off Dead), Autumn Best (4400, Woman of the Hour), and author Lillie Lainoff, whose gender-swapped retelling of “The Three Musketeers,” called All for One, has as its heroine a fencer who, like Lainoff, has Postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS).
Now, as the Our Stage/Our Voices Artist-in-Residence, Steve seeks to increase opportunities for members of central Illinois’ disabled community to enjoy and participate in theater. He also wants to highlight theatrical productions in which disabilities are integral to the story, but aren’t the whole story.
