Littleton actor Samantha Barrasso didn’t just push the boundaries of disability and stage intimacy in 2023. She gave them a giant kiss-off.

Barrasso, blind since birth, played tragic teen Wendla Bergmann in “Spring Awakening” for the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company in March. That’s the revolutionary Broadway musical that argues leaving kids in the dark about the often frightening sexual urges of adolescence can bring deadly consequences. (Her intensely innocent – and slightly sadomasochistic – 14-year-old character dies during a botched abortion.)

In September, Barrasso played the fiery prostitute Fräulein Kost in Vintage Theatre’s “Cabaret,” the classic Kander & Ebb musical about an era of indulgence and sexual ambiguity coming to an end in Berlin with the rise of the Nazi Party. Kost is a comic, sexy, spitfire role that turns chilling when she publicly announces her allegiance to the Nazis.

It’s safe to say that, 10 years ago, Barrasso doesn’t get cast for either overtly sexual role. Sweet Emily Gibb in “Our Town”? Sure. A blind Nazi prostitute in “Cabaret”? Never, ever. But a reckoning has been visiting theater companies both local and national over the past few years, and the playing field is leveling. (OK, more like, “inching in the right direction.”)

“I think we as a community are more open to seeing roles differently now,” said “Cabaret” director Bernie Cardell. “I think we’re finally realizing that it doesn’t have to look like it has always looked before.”

Ben Raanan has been blissfully pushing envelopes ever since he was named Phamaly’s artistic director in 2021. Phamaly specifically exists to give actors with disabilities opportunities to perform. And, like Cardell, Raanan believed Barrasso was simply the best person for the role. Easy peasy.

“I think Sammy is one of the strongest performers in all of Colorado,” Raanan said. “We all know she has the most incredible voice, but I think her real gift is that she’s fearless. As an actor, she is open to explore just about anything. And as a human, she is open to explore just about anything – with a wicked sense of humor.”

A plethora of core Phamaly performers found work this year on other area stages. Raanan believes that says a lot about the theater community – and their audiences – “that they are now more willing to accept a  performer where they are – instead of what they want a performer to be.”

Barrasso is a graduate of Aurora Grandview High School and the University of Denver, and is a veteran of 12 Phamaly productions. But being cast as Wendla was a game-changer. She was downright giddy about it.

“I have been jonesing for the chance to play the role since I first learned of its existence 17 years ago,” Barrasso said. That’s three years more than Wendla is even alive in the story, but you’d never know it to look at Barrasso. “She is forever young,” Raanan said. “She has the heart of a child in the way she walks through life and explores the world. She is an optimistic person who lives in a world where things are always positive and happy.”

But still, it takes some real bravery for any actor to play Wendla, a profoundly naive girl who’s never been told about sex or pregnancy and finds herself in an intensely vulnerable moment alone with a boy whose only real understanding of sex himself was watching a colt violently mount a mare.

Now imagine playing that moment blind. Barrasso’s condition is called coloboma. It’s when you are born with eyes that are missing part of their essential tissue. But Barrasso was all-in to take on challenging emotional scenes that are rarely afforded to actors with disabilities.

The disabled community often feels infantilized, Barrasso said – and that’s something Phamaly has been addressing head-on since 2019 by presenting a succession of sexually robust musicals in “Chicago,” “The Rocky Horror Musical” and, most recently, “Spring Awakening.”

“The whole point of ‘Spring Awakening’ is that kids need to be given reproductive sexual education,” Barrasso said. “And the whole point of our ‘Spring Awakening’ is that disabled kids need to be given the same reproductive sexual education that able-bodied kids get – and if not, then you get these tragic results. So, yes: Disabled kids need to be taken seriously. And their autonomy needs to be taken seriously.”

Raanan challenged his audiences’ preconceptions from the very first moment of “Spring Awakening.” The story began with Barrasso, using her assistive cane, making a long and intentionally slow walk to ask her mother where babies come from.

“We really wanted to play up the audience’s first impression of Sammy as ‘this sweet little blind person who is going to act today,’” Raanan said. “And then the moment she opens her mouth, you get this intensely powerful singing voice.

“It goes to show that just because someone looks like they don’t understand the world doesn’t mean they can’t come into that world and change it.”

Barrasso next appears as Becky Two Shoes in Littleton Town Hall Arts Center’s upcoming musical “Urinetown,” playing Jan. 26-Feb. 25.

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 23rd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.