Toward a Theory of Disability Documentary: Alison O’Daniel’s The Tuba Thieves (2013–Present)

Alison O’Daniel’s The Tuba Thieves (2013–present) is an as-yet-unfinished, experimental nonfiction film about the practice and limitations of hearing. O’Daniel is hard of hearing; her work offers a significant alternative to the autobiographical turn in documentary cinema, evoking elements of her experience and those of her hard-of-hearing and deaf collaborators by refusing coherence or continuity in favor of a playful, richly layered approach that prioritizes encounter, performance, and absence. I argue that a theory of disability documentary must account for disability as a form of experience and knowledge unto itself rather than merely a subject of inquiry.