It never ceases to perplex me that nightlife is so inaccessible. Party spaces are often informal, adaptable, and worn through by the movement of bodies. And yet it’s all too rare to find one that actually works for disabled people. It’s even rarer to find one that puts access at its creative heart.
Cuéntame is trying to change that. Over the last 10 years, founders Ryan and Connor Roach have been braiding queer and disability culture together using emergent access-centric methods and media. Their work creates the conditions for a thrilling encounter. With others, with artistry, and with oneself.
This week, Cuéntame launches their latest and most ambitious project: Entangled. Ahead of the 4-day festival’s kick-off on Thursday, November 5, 2026 at the Queer Nightlife Community Center in Brooklyn, I talked with Ryan Roach about where they’ve been and what we can expect at the access extravaganza.
How did Cuéntame come to be?
Cuéntame grew out of a love of storytelling, connecting with others, especially with other disabled and queer people, and wanting to create with my sibling. In 2016, I had been working with different disability organizations in Perú and I brought an idea to Connor that we should create a documentary with our other sibling that explored the work of disabled activists in Lima. This led to our first documentary. While finishing post-production of that film, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we became more curious about how the rest of the disabled community was experiencing the pandemic, which led to our book, Exploring the Impacts of Ableism: A COVID-19 Photo Essay Series. This project allowed us to connect with over 80 disabled individuals across the U.S., many of whom are queer, and it had a really profound impact on my need to be in community with others.
When we started working on our next storytelling project, Connor and I really wanted to explore queerness, disability, and nightlife. We were lucky to begin working with two visionaries, Octavio Rose Hingle of Crip Ectasy and Saira Barbaric of MouthWater, who invited us into their worlds to film the access-centered beauty they were creating. Getting the chance to see first hand the beauty of access-centered art and nightlife via their visions helped propel Cuéntame to where we are today.
Why the focus on nightlife?
My queer and disability cultural organizing has focused on nightlife as it is somewhere I found myself in my queerness. I’m incredibly grateful to all the events I’ve been to over the years where attendees and artists encouraged exploration of self. Nightlife is also a space where Connor and I grew up together outside of our parents’ home. I’m grateful we got to explore queerness in nightlife spaces together. It feels right to be creating these offerings with them.
One of the glaring things I noticed in many nightlife spaces was the inaccessibility. Many spaces did not consider how access could be incorporated into their work to bring more people together and how creative accessibility can be. I wanted to create space using innovative concepts to access so others could have a chance to explore, connect, and experience art in more access-centered environments.
What have you learned from your previous parties, like Shake Your Ass for Accessibility and Facestrapped?
First and foremost, I continue to learn that disabled people want a space where we can party. The other take away I have is that there are many innovative ways to incorporate access. After each event, we consider ways we can improve our accessibility while seeking out information from others in the community who are also building access-centered spaces.
What are some examples of these access innovations?
An innovation in access that I’m really excited about and that we have been able to incorporate is audio descriptions at a party. For so long I had always associated audio descriptions with film or television, but over the years I’ve seen how the work has expanded and become so creative. I love the way a person can describe all the beautiful things happening at a party. I am so excited that we will have audio descriptions at our rave, FACESTRAPPED Vol. II.
Another innovation in access that really excites me is seating. How I stretch, move, and relax my body is really important and that usually involves sitting for prolonged periods of time or lying down. For Entangled, we want attendees to feel comfortable in the club moving their bodies the way they need to, so we are incorporating various types of seating, including multiple sizes of couches, chairs, beds, and massage tables on the dance floor and in relaxed spaces.
It’s moving to see how much care you put into creating and protecting the conditions for good drama. The performance possibilities, the stunts, the gaggery of it all — these are all things too often kept from people who can’t count on nightlife spaces to meet their access needs. Could you say a bit about the trickier kinds of drama? Where do things get tough?
One of the trickier types of drama, especially in trying to create access-centered spaces, is that access needs can be conflicting. Realizing that someone’s access needs cannot be met if you are creating another type of access can feel really challenging.
For example, at our first in-person class for our DJ cohort this year, our teaching DJ utilized lip reading for communication. This was a form of access to him. At the same time one of the forms of access we used in the class as a requirement is masking. These two forms of access came in conflict. We attempted to get creative by using COVID testing protocols, taking your masks down when speaking, and projecting captions, but none of these were perfect solutions. This was a moment of tricky drama in these spaces as we wanted to try to meet everyone’s access needs. We tried to be creative, but these weren’t perfect solutions.
Despite these moments being tough, it is important to work to address them and try to get creative instead of giving up.
Entangled is just a few days away. What do you hope for? And what should we expect?
I am hoping as many people as possible show up to have a phenomenal time and that in the process of heading to Entangled, attendees can just show up. One of our goals with Entangled is to provide as much information as possible about access offerings and what to expect. I hope attendees can utilize these resources to increase their ease in coming to the events.
People can expect 4 days of access-centered programming celebrating the queer and disabled community in a reimagined club space. There will be a fierce line-up including, The Mother Particle, a performance co-produced by Octavio Rose Hingle and Mthr Trsa, as well as party collabs with TRANSMISSION and Positive Deviance, and a livestream from the Cuéntame DJ cohort. You can expect day beds on the dance floor, various relaxed spaces, and queer and disabled artists showing off their talents. Entangled is a space to connect on the dance floor, become mesmerized with an experimental performance and to move to the sounds of an array of DJs in an environment where access has been incorporated from the start.