- [Isabella Jibilian] On audition day, a collection of Providence dramatists capture a full spectrum of emotions.

Humor- - Can you give me like, a good growl?

- [Isabella Jibilian] Anger.

- How can you dare speak to me in this manner?

- [Isabella Jibilian] Joy.

(pair laughs) - Did you feel it?

- Definitely.

- Yeah.

- [Isabella Jibilian] But for these actors and directors, there's another spectrum they're especially interested in.

- I was diagnosed as autistic when I was like 13-ish.

- [Isabella Jibilian] Korbin Johnson is an actor and administrator with Spectrum Theater Ensemble.

- Most of the plays that we put on now have themes of neuro diversity.

Our actors and creative team are neuro diverse.

- [Isabella Jibilian] They're looking to change perceptions about conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurological differences.

- From as long as I can remember, I was like, "There's something different."

I would be like, "Why did everyone laugh at me there?

Why did, you know, everyone kind of steer away from me there?"

And then it's like, oh, 'cause I was very obviously missing a major social cue.

- [Isabella Jibilian] After auditions, Johnson was cast as the lead in the play "Space."

- Now it's, it's me up in, up in the mulberry tree.

My character is named Margaret.

It starts out they're kind of in like a clinic with a couple other people in like the middle of nowhere in like the Midwest.

- [Isabella Jibilian] Margaret is autistic and has synesthesia, a neurological condition in which people's senses can combine, colors might have smells or sounds might have shapes associated with them.

- Bedroom is barely there yellow, a butter yellow.

- [Isabella Jibilian] The character is a bit of an outcast and faces difficult questions about identity.

It's a plight Johnson understands.

- When I was in middle school, I was getting physically beaten up, almost on a daily basis.

I would get friends for a couple years and then I would lose them and I wouldn't know why I'd lost them 'cause I had missed a social cue and no one would explain it to me.

- Every human being has a different brain and because a neurology is different, we process the world differently.

- [Isabella Jibilian] Barry Prizant is author of the bestselling book, "Uniquely Human, A Different Way of Seeing Autism."

A language pathologist by training, he has spent the last 50 years working and collaborating with autistic people.

At the beginning of his career, the options for therapy were limited primarily to what is now known as Applied Behavioral Analysis or ABA.

- The founder of ABA actually said that autism is basically a bunch of quirky behaviors and the way you treat autism is you decrease the quirky behaviors and the undesirable behaviors and you enhance or build up the desirable behaviors.

- [Isabella Jibilian] Korbin Johnson experienced elements of this approach firsthand.

Like many others on the spectrum, Johnson experienced his sensory sensitivity.

Loud sounds can be upsetting and even painful.

- I remember I had a really big fear of the fire alarm.

Whenever a fire alarm went off, it literally felt like someone was digging knives into my ears.

My school decided they were going to make me watch them pull the alarm and then stand there for 10 seconds before I was allowed to go outside, and if I tried to plug my ears or showed any distress, they would yell at me, and if I was in distress after the fire alarm, they would either tell me that I was faking it or it would be like it's not a big deal.

- [Isabella Jibilian] Prizant has spent much of his career questioning practices like these, the try to change behaviors without looking at what he calls, "The deeper why."

- Behaviors such as flapping and rocking and spinning and staring at your fingers, a lot of behavioral therapies are focused on getting rid of those behaviors.

And now at the very least we have to understand why a child does that or why a person does that.

- And why are they doing it?

- In many cases, it's to regulate emotionally.

- So it's to calm yourself.

- Exactly, exactly.

- And if you don't let a kid calm themselves, what happens?

- It can overflow into outbursts, it could result in severe anxiety in the child.

And this is the area that a lot of autistic adults say that there was so much time and effort putting into trying to make me look normal, as a child, I was traumatized.

- What was the low point?

- Multiple suicide attempts.

I didn't know what was wrong with me or why people didn't wanna be near me.

I was, you know, dealing with depression and other senses too and then some trauma, and I just, you know, I just didn't see a future.

- [Isabella Jibilian] Today, EBA is the default treatment for autism in the U.S. and many families say it's helpful, but in recent years- - More and more different autistic people, getting up and talking about what medical systems have done that was not only wrong but even harmful in the past.

- [Isabella Jibilian] These advocates are part of what's known as the Neuro Diversity Movement.

They are calling for a different approach.

- The best way to support them is to understand them as opposed to just trying to fix them and have them look and behave like every neuro typical person.

- [Isabella Jibilian] And the rise of popular figures, from Temple Grandin to Greta Thunberg- - And change is coming, whether you like it or not, - [Isabella Jibilian] Have shown that autism comes with strengths.

(audience applauds) For Johnson, college was a turning point.

- I came out of the closet, started making more friends, and I was taking classes that I really enjoyed and I kind of had the freedom to just be me and find myself.

- It's almost like instead of fighting autism- - Yeah, I can adapt my surroundings to it.

- Johnson also changed majors from forensic science to theater.

What is it about theater that you feel like clicks for you?

- I've always been really interested in storytelling.

They enunciate a lot of the nuance.

So it's like all of a sudden I can read the social cues because they're being performed and explicitly stated right in front of me.

(people chattering) (door rattles) (shuffling footsteps) - [Isabella Jibilian] It's opening night for "Space" and Spectrum Theater Ensemble is getting ready for show time.

(people chattering) "Space" is the first show on the program.

Johnson's character, Margaret, begins the show as a teen victim of the healthcare system.

- No, I'm not Michelle, I'm Margaret!

- [Isabella Jibilian] But partway through, a plot twist.

- We find out that Margaret's actually a poet and a playwright.

- [Isabella Jibilian] It's a play within a play and it's about how Margaret moves past stereotypes as a neuro divergent young person.

- What about that poem you wrote about your synesthesia?

Come on, spoken word, let's go.

- I can't, there's difficult subjects in it.

- So what, that's your truth.

- On a fundamental level, I go through many of the same challenges that Margaret shares.

Both Margaret and myself are being told that these fundamental parts of our identities are wrong and shouldn't, you know, shouldn't exist and should be suppressed.

- What do you wish people knew about autism?

- I think just the fact that it can be a great thing.

Neuro diversity is a way to kind of bring all of these different groups together that are all different, but share a lot of the same conflicts and struggles.

And so it just creates like this big community of people of all different shapes and sizes and brains and everything.

(audience applauding) (audience cheers)