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After a boy with autism disrupted a Broadway show, this actor leapt to his defense.

Actor Kelvin Moon Loh was performing in a matinee of "The King and I" on Broadway when he heard a commotion in the audience.

Photo by Rob DiCaterino/Flickr.

During a particularly intense moment in the show, a young boy in the crowd started yelling and screaming. According to Loh, the boy's mother tried to lead him quietly out to the lobby, but the boy refused to go. A few members of the audience, frustrated by the disruption, started sniping at the mother.

“A few people just got upset," Loh told Upworthy. Even though the boy's cries had made it difficult to keep the show going, Loh couldn't fathom how anyone could give the boy and his mother grief.

It was clear to him that the child had autism.

“I was just emotional when I got off the stage." Loh said.

Kelvin Moon Loh. Photo via Kelvin Moon Loh, used with permission.

Loh felt terrible that a woman had worked up the courage to bring her son with autism to his show, only to have other audience members treat him like he had no right to be there.

“I thought that what was happening wasn't right," Loh said.

Later that day, he posted about the incident on Facebook (emphasis mine) and pulled no punches:

"I am angry and sad.

Just got off stage from today's matinee and yes, something happened. Someone brought their autistic child to the theater.


That being said- this post won't go the way you think it will.
You think I will admonish that mother for bringing a child who yelped during a quiet moment in the show. You think I will herald an audience that yelled at this mother for bringing their child to the theater. You think that I will have sympathy for my own company whose performances were disturbed from a foreign sound coming from in front of them.

No."





He proceeded to ask his fellow performers and audience members a very tough question:

"Instead, I ask you- when did we as theater people, performers and audience members become so concerned with our own experience that we lose compassion for others?

The theater to me has always been a way to examine/dissect the human experience and present it back to ourselves. Today, something very real was happening in the seats and, yes, it interrupted the fantasy that was supposed to be this matinee but ultimately theater is created to bring people together, not just for entertainment, but to enhance our lives when we walk out the door again.

It so happened that during 'the whipping scene', a rather intense moment in the second act, a child was heard yelping in the audience. It sounded like terror. Not more than one week earlier, during the same scene, a young girl in the front row- seemingly not autistic screamed and cried loudly and no one said anything then.

How is this any different?"






He then described the moment it all happened, as he experienced it from the stage:

"His voice pierced the theater. The audience started to rally against the mother and her child to be removed.

I heard murmurs of 'why would you bring a child like that to the theater?'. This is wrong. Plainly wrong.

Because what you didn't see was a mother desperately trying to do just that. But her son was not compliant. What they didn't see was a mother desperately pleading with her child as he gripped the railing refusing- yelping more out of defiance. I could not look away. I wanted to scream and stop the show and say- 'EVERYONE RELAX. SHE IS TRYING. CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT SHE IS TRYING???!!!!' I will gladly do the entire performance over again. Refund any ticket because-

For her to bring her child to the theater is brave. You don't know what her life is like. Perhaps, they have great days where he can sit still and not make much noise because this is a rare occurrence. Perhaps she chooses to no longer live in fear, and refuses to compromise the experience of her child. Maybe she scouted the aisle seat for a very popular show in case such an episode would occur. She paid the same price to see the show as you did for her family. Her plan, as was yours, was to have an enjoyable afternoon at the theater and slowly her worst fears came true.

I leave you with this- Shows that have special performances for autistic audiences should be commended for their efforts to make theater inclusive for all audiences. I believe like Joseph Papp that theater is created for all people. I stand by that and also for once,

I am in a show that is completely FAMILY FRIENDLY. The King and I on Broadway is just that- FAMILY FRIENDLY- and that means entire families- with disabilities or not. Not only for special performances but for all performances. A night at the theater is special on any night you get to go.

And no, I don't care how much you spent on the tickets."











Like so many Facebook posts, Loh's message was intended just for his family and close friends. Instead, it traveled around the world.

According to Loh, soon after the post went up, he began receiving messages of support from across the U.S., and as far away as Malaysia — not just from parents of children with autism, but from parents of children with disabilities and others who were moved by his call to include people who so often find themselves left out.

For Loh, providing that place of safety is why he and so many of his colleagues got into acting in the first place: to find refuge from a world that doesn't always understand.

“People who love the theater and people who work in the theater, they all came to it because in some way they felt different," Loh said. "They felt in some way they didn't belong, that they were of the outside. And so many people have that background."

His bottom line? A theater is a place where everyone should feel welcome.

Photo by Bahman Farzad/Flickr.

Theater is democratic. It's communal, and no one deserves to be kept away or told they don't belong. And if that means working through the occasional disruption, then so be it.

Compassion is what matters most.

“It's a difficult choice to lead with love first, but at the end of the day, that's what life is about," Loh said.

Pop Culture

Artist uses AI to create ultra realistic portraits of celebrities who left us too soon

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Mercury would be 76 today.

Some icons have truly left this world too early. It’s a tragedy when anyone doesn’t make it to see old age, but when it happens to a well-known public figure, it’s like a bit of their art and legacy dies with them. What might Freddie Mercury have created if he were granted the gift of long life? Bruce Lee? Princess Diana?

Their futures might be mere musings of our imagination, but thanks to a lot of creativity (and a little tech) we can now get a glimpse into what these celebrities might have looked like when they were older.

Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based lawyer and photographer, created a photography series titled “As If Nothing Happened,” which features eerily realistic portraits of long gone celebrities in their golden years. To make the images as real looking as possible, Yesiltas incorporated various photo editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom and VSCO, as well as the AI photo-enhancing software Remini.

“The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel ‘real’ to me,” Yesiltas wrote about his passion project. “The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks as if it was taken by a photographer.”

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American Cancer Society
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Meet the researcher shining a light on the “white lens” of medical AI in skin cancer prevention

How we can create equity for all communities?

All images provided by Adewole Adamson

It begins with more inclusive conversations at a patient level

True

Adewole Adamson, MD, of the University of Texas, Austin, aims to create more equity in health care by gathering data from more diverse populations by using artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning. Dr. Adamson’s work is funded by the American Cancer Society (ACS), an organization committed to advancing health equity through research priorities, programs and services for groups who have been marginalized.

Melanoma became a particular focus for Dr. Adamson after meeting Avery Smith, who lost his wife—a Black woman—to the deadly disease.

melanoma, melanoma for dark skin Avery Smith (left) and Adamson (sidenote)

This personal encounter, coupled with multiple conversations with Black dermatology patients, drove Dr. Adamson to a concerning discovery: as advanced as AI is at detecting possible skin cancers, it is heavily biased.

To understand this bias, it helps to first know how AI works in the early detection of skin cancer, which Dr. Adamson explains in his paper for the New England Journal of Medicine (paywall). The process uses computers that rely on sets of accumulated data to learn what healthy or unhealthy skin looks like and then create an algorithm to predict diagnoses based on those data sets.

This process, known as supervised learning, could lead to huge benefits in preventive care.

After all, early detection is key to better outcomes. The problem is that the data sets don’t include enough information about darker skin tones. As Adamson put it, “everything is viewed through a ‘white lens.’”

“If you don’t teach the algorithm with a diverse set of images, then that algorithm won’t work out in the public that is diverse,” writes Adamson in a study he co-wrote with Smith (according to a story in The Atlantic). “So there’s risk, then, for people with skin of color to fall through the cracks.”

Tragically, Smith’s wife was diagnosed with melanoma too late and paid the ultimate price for it. And she was not an anomaly—though the disease is more common for White patients, Black cancer patients are far more likely to be diagnosed at later stages, causing a notable disparity in survival rates between non-Hispanics whites (90%) and non-Hispanic blacks (66%).

As a computer scientist, Smith suspected this racial bias and reached out to Adamson, hoping a Black dermatologist would have more diverse data sets. Though Adamson didn’t have what Smith was initially looking for, this realization ignited a personal mission to investigate and reduce disparities.

Now, Adamson uses the knowledge gained through his years of research to help advance the fight for health equity. To him, that means not only gaining a wider array of data sets, but also having more conversations with patients to understand how socioeconomic status impacts the level and efficiency of care.

“At the end of the day, what matters most is how we help patients at the patient level,” Adamson told Upworthy. “And how can you do that without knowing exactly what barriers they face?”

american cancer society, skin cacner treatment"What matters most is how we help patients at the patient level."https://www.kellydavidsonstudio.com/

The American Cancer Society believes everyone deserves a fair and just opportunity to prevent, find, treat, and survive cancer—regardless of how much money they make, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, gender identity, their disability status, or where they live. Inclusive tools and resources on the Health Equity section of their website can be found here. For more information about skin cancer, visit cancer.org/skincancer.

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