When Jennifer Kumiyama got the call that Disney wanted her to read for a part in an upcoming animated film, she sent it to voicemail.
It was 2022 and she couldn’t take the call because she was in then-Mayor Robert Garcia’s office in the middle of her workday as a scheduler for his office, a position she held after leaving a career working in stage, film and television productions.
A returned phone call and two auditions later, Kumiyama was cast as Dahlia in Disney’s newly released animated film, “Wish.” The movie centers around Asha, a young woman on a mission with big dreams to save her community from the ruler of the kingdom of Rosas. Dahlia, voiced by Kumiyama, is Asha’s best friend in the movie and baker in the king’s castle.
“She has a visible physical disability,” Kumiyama said. “She walks with a cane and she has a limp. They don’t address her disability in the film, which I really like because there’s more to a person than just their disability.”
It was Kumiyama’s first time doing voiceover work and while she approached all her performances with the same level of rigor, this role gave her some freedom that theater performances didn’t — she could do a retake if she needed to.
“Even though it’s not live, it’s still very, very physical and very taxing,” Kumiyama said.
Since her role, she’s become Long Beach’s Citywide Accessibility Coordinator, a public service position focused on education and compliance.
Kumiyama, who is 43 and a Long Beach resident, was born with Arthrogryposis, a condition that affects a person’s joints. She uses a wheelchair daily and began her path toward an entertainment career when she was in her first play in kindergarten.
Her love of the arts was spurred on by her grandmother, who took her to see plays like “Annie” in Los Angeles and Orange County. Kumiyama, whose family has both a Catholic and Southern Baptist background, spent hours in church drawn to its music most of all.
“That’s really what sparked my passion for music,” Kumiyama said.
In 2002, Kumiyama landed a full-time role performing four times a day in “Aladdin the Musical Spectacular” at Disney’s California Adventure theme park. It was the first time ever a performer in a wheelchair was on a Disney stage.
“I feel completely lucky because you don’t see people like me on stage, especially at places like Disneyland,” Kumiyama said. “But that’s changed now and I’m super happy.”
Recently another performer who uses a wheelchair, Kaylee Bays, danced in “Rogers: The Musical” at the same theater Kumiyama performed in during Aladdin.
When the Aladdin show came to a close, Kumiyama struggled with what to do next. Ms. Wheelchair California, an advocacy-based pageant crowned Kumiyama the winner in 2010, and soon, she realized that, in addition to performing, she had a passion for public service and enacting change through policy that better reflected the needs of her community.
In 2014, she was appointed by then-Mayor Robert Garcia to serve on the Citizens’ Advisory Commission on Disability where she served as chair of the commission.
“Hearing about other people’s struggles within the city as people with disabilities and their ideas on how to make our city more accessible was really eye-opening,” Kumiyama said. “Especially when we started talking about policy, I really started digging into the weeds of things.”
Now as Long Beach’s Citywide Accessibility Coordinator, she is charged with making sure the city is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), covering everything from infrastructure to public places, programs, and services.
Her position was placed into Long Beach’s Office of Equity at the beginning of the year which allowed her to go beyond just looking at her role from an accessibility standpoint.
“I get to talk about disability from a disability justice standpoint — what disability looks like, intersectionality, when we talk about other things that we talk about in the city like immigration, housing, LGBTQ issues, Black and Brown issues, education, economic social status, things like that,” Kumiyama said. “And I think that really helps the city grasp, somewhat grasp, what it’s like to be a person that lives with a disability.”
And while she initially felt an identity crisis after moving into the political sphere after so many years of performing, she realized that it’s still just as much a part of her life now as it was then. Her schedule with the city means Kumiyama is off from work every other Friday so those were her days to record her part in the movie.
“After a while, it clicked: Just because I’m not doing it every day doesn’t mean that I’m not a singer, not a performer,” Kumiyama said. “I really learned that you can have more than one passion in life and I feel very fortunate to be able to have both of mine.”
“Wish” is now playing in theaters everywhere.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Kumiyama was working in former mayor Robert Garcia’s office when she got a call about the Disney part.