Ride the Cyclone is a musical first produced in 2008 by Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond, and it features a disabled character - Ricky Potts, who lost his ability to walk and speak at an early age. In 2022, an actor by the name of Yannick-Robin Eike Mirko was cast as the first disabled actor to play Ricky Potts in 14 years, but was fired soon after, for being “too disabled.” Yannick has been advocating for justice ever since this. 

Recently, it was revealed that Rickys disability was removed from the script, and won’t be represented in any future productions of Ride the Cyclone.

(The new script ^^^)

In August of last year, the BlueBridge theatre did a production of Ride the Cyclone, (in which both Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond were involved) where Rickys disability was completely cut from the script, but as now it has been cut from the official script, meaning that any future productions of Ride the Cyclone will not feature the story of Rickys Disability.

His backstory of never being able to speak and having so much to say, has just been reduced to him being a typical quiet kid. As of now this is all the information we have on this situation.

Actors with disabilities are horribly discriminated against, and while everything else in the musical theatre is moving forwards, stopping ableism seems to be moving backwards, and we can play a part in stopping this by bringing awareness to it.