The first time I saw a performance by the Phamaly Theatre Company as a critic for a major newspaper, I knew I had to find just the right words to describe how it feels to sit back and watch a company made up entirely of disabled actors turn an ordinary musical into a transformative experience.

When the show ended, the standing ovation was immediate, earned and extended. In those days, I often wrote that Denver theater audiences are so easy, they would stand for a sit-in.

But on this night, I joined in, without apology. These were the nights I lived for at the theater.

The year was 2002, and the musical was a trifle called “Once Upon a Mattress.” There had been a moment where a queen, played by an actor in a wheelchair, demonstrated an elaborate dance for her subjects. Her able-bodied minions quickly followed her instructions, while those in wheelchairs merely moved their arms. So when the admonishing queen screamed, “No, do it like me!” the able-bodied characters got the drift, ran off stage and returned in wheelchairs. They then joined in on an intricate, joyous dance on wheels that sent the audience into prolonged cheers.

So when I sat down to write about that standing ovation, I described the moment as

honestly as I could in the moment: “I stood for those who cannot.”

Everything has changed for Phamaly in the ensuing two decades. Not only in how they are seen, but in how they see themselves. Back then, PHAMALY was an acronym that not only embraced the word “handicapped” — it was part of its name. Today, Phamaly calls itself “a disability-affirmative company” that provides a creative home for theatre artists with disabilities.

Journalists, too, have evolved in how we write about the company. I often find myself type-dancing that fine line between critical admiration and oblivious pandering. Too often, stories and reviews by writers who are new to Phamaly can come off as condescending in their breathless praise.

Outgoing Artistic Director Regan Linton calls it well-intentioned “Inspiration Porn,” which refers to our human tendency as both observers and audiences to heap platitudes on the company simply because it exists, not because it is always earned.

“Imperfect,” a new documentary look at Phamaly that will be featured this week at the Denver Film Festival, is not inspiration porn, Linton promises. The film, co-directed by Linton and award-winning Denver filmmaker Brian Malone, follows the company’s tumultuous and ultimately triumphant 2019 staging of the musical “Chicago” as a framework for telling, as Linton describes it, “the really honest and authentic stories of eight individual artists with disabilities and the truth of their realities in their daily lives.”

The film follows Linton, who directed “Chicago,” as well as cast members Leonard Barrett Jr., Laurice Quinn, Megan McGuire, Adam Russell Johnson, Maggie Whittum, Mark Dissette and Lucy Roucis, whose unexpected death in May provides a heartbreaking coda.

Roucis was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease 36 years ago, at age 25, and fought it like hell every day that followed. She went on to star in dozens of Phamaly musicals and made a notable appearance in the film “Love and Other Drugs.” She once told me that waking up was the hardest part of her day because her muscles would tighten overnight to the point of paralysis. So she would set some pills in a dish next to her pillow each night. When she woke up, she would roll over, lick them up with her tongue and then wait for her muscles to loosen.

Those are the stories you don’t know when you watch Phamaly actors on stage. And those are the stories Malone wanted to tell in his film.

“My first Phamaly show was ‘Annie’ in 2017, and it really was a transcendental experience,” said Malone, who won the Denver Film Festival’s True Grit Award as Denver’s Filmmaker of the Year in 2018. “I learned a lot about myself and my own perceptions of people with disabilities just by watching these actors onstage. But one of the things I immediately recognized was that there is really a good story here. Lots of them.”

Malone had met Linton, who was paralyzed in a 2002 auto collision, while making educational videos for Englewood’s famed Craig rehabilitation hospital. Linton was wanting to make a documentary about Phamaly, and so Malone let her drive the project. He told Linton: “You’ll be the racecar driver, and I’ll be your mechanic.”

The finished film, Malone says, “is really the examination and observation of this band of actors who happen to have disabilities and are taking on the task of putting on a major musical from auditions through opening night.”

But it’s not so much how they did it as who did it. “It’s really more about these different creative people and what they have to do just to get to rehearsal,” Malone said. “Yes, these are inspirational people with inspirational stories. But we are trying to push beyond that. We are really trying to look at each of our subjects as creative human beings who want and deserve the right to be on stage and play in front of an audience just like any other actor. They deserve that opportunity.”

In the film, we see Johnson, who has cerebral palsy and a perpetually sunny disposition, audition for “Chicago,” get cut, and then get called back in when another actor drops out. We see him working his part-time job at the McGuckin Hardware store in Boulder. Malone says he makes for a great character in the film.

So too, does young McGuire, who plays the killer showgirl Roxie Hart. Given that McGuire was born without a left hand, you can bet Linton made maximum physical comedy out of the song “We Both Reached for the Gun.” At the time of her casting, Maguire was not yet 18, just graduating from high school, preparing to live in Denver on her own for two months — and planning her wedding.

“We followed Megan to Alamosa, where she lives on this modest little farm in the middle of sagebrush, with these glorious mountains in the background,” Malone said. “It was cool to see the transformation of this shy, young rural farm girl into … Roxie Hart.”

Linton and Malone made “Imperfect” for just $80,000, largely from individual contributors and gifts from Craig Hospital and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. But the film, they say, is not meant to be a promotional tool for Phamaly.

“Ultimately, yes, Phamaly gave us the opportunity to tell this story. But in the end, the story is so much bigger,” said Linton, who next March will be featured in the world-premiere staging of Craig Lucas’ newest play, “Change Agent,” at the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

“I hope that people who don’t consider themselves as having disabilities see this film and think, ‘ This is something I never thought was possible.’ And similarly, I hope that people with disabilities see this film and feel the transformative power of seeing someone like themselves up on the screen and think, ‘Oh my gosh, maybe my life is bigger than people have been telling me it is.’ Or, ‘Maybe my life isn’t over because I was injured.’

“I hope it just expands people’s ideas of what is still possible in this world. Even with all of the difficulties that we are facing, we need to maintain hope.”

At one point, the film shows Linton revisiting her journal from just after her paralysis, when she was fearful of the future and her place in the world. “I just need someone to tell me that the future is bright and everything will be OK,” she wrote then.

Imperfect, maybe. But bright. And definitely OK.

Denver Gazette contributing arts columnist John Moore is an award-winning journalist who was named one of the 10 most influential theater critics by American Theatre Magazine. He is now producing independent journalism as part of his own company, Moore Media.