Big news for our HSP/PLS community!
Watch Me Walk, streaming online for only $25 through the theater’s website until March 7, 2026. It’s a powerful, honest, and often funny look at disability, HSP, resilience, and how we relate to one another—highly recommended for everyone in the HSP/PLS and wider disability, mobility-impaired community.
Watch Me Walk, which concluded an extended world-premiere run in NYC on February 15, is a hilariously frank, profound play about Gridley’s experience of being diagnosed and living with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia
Watch Me Walk is performed by Gridley with Alex Gibson and Keith Johnson. It’s “the show [Anne] never wanted to write”—about her experiences since being diagnosed with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), a rare degenerative neurological disease which her mother and grandmother also had. The play is part observational comedy, part bonkers family history, part critique of our trainwreck of a healthcare system.
Watch Me Walk has garnered widespread critical praise, with Hilton Als of The New Yorker calling Gridley an “incredible performer” and the play “a prime example of what we get when autobiographical theatre works: intelligence, and the ability to laugh at oneself, with one’s heart, as always, in both the wrong and the right place.” Chris Bonanos of New York Magazine deemed Watch Me Walk “the best cultural experience I had last week,” and Dan Rubins’ Theatermania review proclaimed, “Every step has meaning in Anne Gridley’s Watch Me Walk,” and “Gridley’s wry, warm delivery and her oft-mischievous grin allow her to bring the storytelling to very dark places and then lead us back to the light.” Loren Noveck, in Exeunt, described the show as “breathtaking”; Alisa Solomon, in Jewish Currents, called it “hilarious”; and Tony Marinelli, writing for TheaterScene, observed, “Gridley gives us a reckoning with a life that has learned, stubbornly and brilliantly, how to keep moving. She is in complete command—of her balance, of the moment, of the uneasy tenderness she has coaxed from the room—and, more to the point, of us.”
Anne Gridley said, “I am extremely grateful to Soho Rep and the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation to be able to offer a streaming version of Watch Me Walk. To do so on Rare Disease Day is even more meaningful. Bringing awareness to HSP is part of why I created the show, and to share it with a global audience after a fantastic run in New York is an honor."
Soho Rep Director Cynthia Flowers commented, “At Soho Rep, we believe deeply that theater artists have a unique and special power to draw attention to issues that might otherwise go unnoticed, and to shift how audiences view the world around them. It has been a privilege to produce Anne Gridley's funny, powerful, illuminating play Watch Me Walk, about her experience being diagnosed and living with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia. It is equally exciting that we are now able to create our first-ever streaming run of a Soho Rep production, with Anne's encouragement and advocacy. The Spastic Paraplegia Foundation are true leaders in the work of pursuing effective treatment and a cure for HSP. We are thrilled to partner with them to share Watch Me Walk with audience members across the globe, including folks who have rare diseases themselves, in our shared efforts to spark meaningful conversation and change.”
Norma Pruitt, Executive Director, Spastic Paraplegia Foundation, Inc., said, “Watch Me Walk gives voice to an experience that too often goes unnoticed. By sharing Anne’s work with a global audience, we are not only raising awareness, but transforming visibility into action and momentum for research, innovation, and ultimately a cure for individuals affected by Spastic Paraplegia (SP), Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), or Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS).”
Interview with Anne & Eric
What happens when you're a performer and your body doesn't work the way it used to? This question and many more are addressed through a new production as part of the Under the Radar festival.
Buy Access for On-Demand Streaming
The $25 streaming registration supports the production and theater companies bringing this important story to audiences worldwide, and your participation helps advance awareness for the HSP and PLS community.
About Anne Gridley
Anne Gridley is a two-time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido. In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Pan Pan, Chameckilerner, Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada?, taught devised theater at Bard College, and comedy at Northwestern University. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University.
About Eric Ting
Eric Ting is a two-time Obie Award-winning director and one of three Directors of Soho Rep. Credits include world premieres of Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!, We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… (Soho Rep); The Comeuppance (Signature Theater); The Far Country (Atlantic Theater Co); The 1491s’ Between Two Knees (OSF and PAC-NYC); and Parable of the Sower: The Opera (Lincoln Center). Most recently: Galas (Little Island) with Anthony Roth Costanzo. Also: Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, Yale Rep, McCarter, Williamstown, Alliance, Cincinnati Playhouse, Goodman, CTG, ACT, Berkeley Rep. International: Singapore, France, UAE, Holland, Canada, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bali.
About Soho Rep
Soho Rep provides radical theater makers with productions of the highest caliber and tailor-made development at key junctures in their artistic practice. The organization elevates artists as thought leaders and citizens who change the field and society. Artistic autonomy is paramount at Soho Rep; the organization encourages an unmediated connection between artists and audiences to create a springboard for transformation and rich civic life.
Critics continue to herald Soho Rep as a go-to theater for new and original works. Time Out New York says, “Soho Rep is the best theater in NYC,” and The New York Times writes, “The downtown powerhouse… regularly outclasses the work done on many of the city’s larger stages.” Soho Rep won the “Best Theater in NYC” award for the Time Out Best of the City Awards 2021. Time Out New York wrote, "Soho Rep isn’t the last word in downtown experimental theater: Better than that, it’s often one of the first words, championing major voices at key points in their careers.”
Soho Rep has also been honored with a Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement. Over the last decade, Soho Rep productions have garnered 28 OBIE Awards, and numerous Drama Desk Awards, Lucille Lortel Awards, Outer Critics Circle Awards, and other honors. Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, commissioned by Soho Rep and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s Public Obscenities, commissioned by Soho Rep and presented by Soho Rep and NAATCO National Partnership project, was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as the winner of four Obie Awards.
In recent years, Soho Rep has presented plays by established and emerging theater artists such as David Adjmi, Annie Baker, Alice Birch, Becca Blackwell, Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Jackie Sibblies Drury, debbie tucker green, Aleshea Harris, Lucas Hnath, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Hansol Jung, Daniel Alexander Jones, Sarah Kane, Raja Feather Kelly, Richard Maxwell, Julia Mounsey and Peter Mills Weiss, Young Jean Lee, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Mara Vélez Meléndez, Nia Akilah Robinson, Jordan Tannahill, Carmelita Tropicana, and Anne Washburn.
About the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation, Inc., (SPF)
The Spastic Paraplegia Foundation, Inc., is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research, awareness, and support for a global audience of individuals and families affected by Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP) and Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS)—rare, progressive neurological disorders that impact mobility and quality of life. SPF works to accelerate the development of treatments and cures by funding research, fostering scientific collaboration, engaging regulatory stakeholders, and elevating patient voice. Through education, advocacy, and community-building initiatives, SPF connects individuals nationwide while driving momentum toward meaningful therapeutic progress. For more information, visit sp-foundation.org.
Funding Credits
Watch Me Walk is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Support for the development of Watch Me Walk was provided by Northwestern University's School of Communication and the Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts.
Press Contact: Blake Zidell at Blake Zidell & Associates: 718.643.9052, blake@blakezidell.com
