The Cast; Photo Credit: Alex Brenner.

Presented by ArtsEmerson 
FlawBored from UK
Director/dramaturg – Josh Roche
Created by Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani, and Chloe Palmer

April 2 – 13, 2025
Emerson Paramount Center 
Jackie Liebergott Black Box 
Boston, MA

Recommended for Ages 16+
Content warning: Strong Language, Ableism, Graphic Spoken Descriptions of Injury
Running Time: 60-ish minutes, no intermission

BOSTON — Sitting in the audience for FlawBored’s It’s A Motherf**king Pleasure in Emerson’s Jackie Liebergott Black Box, I felt unhindered joy watching the cast members Samuel Brewer, Aarian Mehrabani, and Chloe Palmer toss disability anxiety back into the faces of theoretical ableds whose anal accessibility pedantry makes our lives more work than it already is. My friends, it truly was a motherfucking pleasure. 

On a bright yellow, rectangle carpet with caution tape around its borders, two low armchairs are stationed audience right with a coffee table between them. A microphone sits on the table. A standing mic is audience left. A massive screen for captioning is suspended above it all stage center. The set design by Cara Evans evokes an office waiting room. The lighting design by Alex Musgrave is low onstage at first. Lights come up as the cast enters. The lights will go up and down at the cast’s request. It is the first sign of many that It’s A Motherf**king Pleasure is not your average Karen’s brave play about disability. 

It’s A Motherf**king Pleasure examines the everyday ableism disabled persons manage because we are disabled. First, the show explains ableism and the organized system of infantilizing, pedantic sticklers who mean well but create more problems than they solve through a hilarious montage of multi-sensory meta-satire sequences. Brewer, Mehrabani, and Palmer dispensed politically correct accessibility rules and trigger warnings to send their audience into a tizzy of laughter and discomfort. It was gloriously chaotic. 

Then, a fictitious example of how late-stage capitalism disrupts accessibility by selling disability to shareholders at a 300% markup is played out for our educational advancement and merriment: A blind marketing executive leads a disability influencer into a bigger, brasher internet career and book deal. The segment starts to put the porn in inspiration porn (a term coined by the late, great Australian activist Stella Young) and stops before partial nudity but after praising a cast member’s tensile posterior.

After spending the first third of the show teaching accessibility and ableism to us, they graciously assume we know what ableism looks like now. In the final act, the cast gives us unadulterated examples of ableism playing live and in color on TikTok. And then, the gratuitous, self-flagellating apologies start and don’t stop coming. The production is followed by a spirited talkback with the cast and director. If it sounds overwhelming, it is. Rest assured this show at all moments – with the exception of a deeply serious moment that wrongly compares self-harm to disability pride – is upwardly punching, and utterly hilarious. 

It’s A Motherf**king Pleasure asks us (among other questions), is it immoral for disabled persons to take advantage of abled people through beneficial ableism after those abled people have dehumanized us? I have brachial plexus palsy. You bet my sweet, yoga-toned ass I would monetize ableism for my benefit if I could: Disability is the one minority group everyone is at risk of joining but society considers its members a niche population. The fascist-in-chief and his cronies are illegally dismantling DEI one executive order at a time. The ADA is on the chopping block. In theory, I’d happily swindle ableds who’ve never met a disabled person if it meant I could afford physical therapy appointments through the next four years. It wouldn’t make me more evil than the oligarchs bastardizing the U.S. Constitution for a few bucks…

But I digress…  

It’s A Motherf**king Pleasure is fringe theatre activism that educates as it entertains. An appreciative viewer will understand that people with disabilities are, in fact, people – not paragons of purity and goodness put on this plane to teach others to be their better selves. While this show may not be approachable for all patrons, it is as accessible as the Microsoft Paint software used in its video design by Dan Light. Not all things are for all people and that’s okay. This thing for many people runs at the Emerson Paramount Center through April 13. 

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