Welcome...

This is an article I wrote for the Equity Magazine after their Conference on Diversity in 2014

‘Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything’

George Bernard Shaw

It was a privilege to be asked to sit with my fellow theatre practitioners on the stage of the Sydney Theatre Company and speak frankly about the discrimination that occurs within our industry.

It was liberating to be able to say that I haven’t been for an audition of any kind since becoming a wheelchair user.

These things have to be said if we are going to change things; if we are going to connect to an audience which is waiting to see itself represented on our stages and screens.

I work in a particularly vibrant section of the performing arts industry, with disabled performers and writers who make some of the best work I have ever seen (which in the case of Back to Back Theatre and The Other Film Festival is lauded internationally), but work which is largely unknown within the Australian mainstream performing arts industry. At the conference, I sat with friends and colleagues I hadn’t seen for years and made the realisation that I and my disabled colleagues also belong on mainstream stages and screens.

But there is a problem. In the mainstream industry, we don’t have disabled script-writers writing for stage and screen, so our stories are not being told. This means that there are no roles being written for actors with disability. Drama schools rarely take and train young disabled performers, so there is no pathway for young talented disabled performers to enter the established industry.

Which brings me to the issue of quotas. There is a precedent here. Quotas have been put in place worldwide, to alter the experience of women at work and to address the gender divide. It has worked; better in some countries than others, but it has worked. Now women in Australia can expect to be employed in jobs which were once the sole domain of men.

In order for disabled artists to step up in the same way as everyone else (and I think we should!), we need access to the same pathways as everyone else. And that’s not just about putting a ramp in. It’s about the industry changing its thinking.

After all, as a wheelchair user I can play a mother, a sister, a neighbour, a prisoner, a librarian, a suicide bomber, a forensic pathologist, a murderer, a psychiatrist, an office worker, an ex-paralympian, a busy-body….the point I make is that the list of roles I can play is a lot longer than the list of roles I can’t play. So why am I not auditioning for them alongside my able-bodied colleagues?

We need to change this.

Quotas are one way of practically bringing about that change. We know that inclusion is good for business. There is undeniable evidence of this in the corporate world, and best practise in that sector has changed accordingly.

There is undeniable evidence of inclusion being good for business in the entertainment industry too.

Wogs Out of Work garnered an audience that had never been to the theatre before, and played to capacity houses for months when it premiered at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney all those years ago. Why?  Because a group of people saw themselves on stage for the first time ever.

In Melbourne in 2013, the Malthouse Theatre’s all-indigenous version of King Lear played a sold-out season and then toured to festivals across Australia.

Who will be the first mainstream director to look through the disability lens to cast their play?

Given the potential for growing audiences and making money, why wouldn’t our mainstream theatres and production houses embrace diversity and put quotas in place? Not only does it oil the creative machine to hear stories that have never been told before, but telling new stories in new ways garners brand new collaborations. And new collaborations give audiences new experiences.

The Australia Council understands this. CEO, Tony Grybowski recently announced funding for their Artists with Disability Program of one million dollars over three years. Given that their funding has been slashed recently, this is an extraordinary initiative.

Another potentially extraordinary initiative, that came directly out of the conference (and the generous spirits of our Diversity Committee co-chairs, Pearl Tan and Bali Padda), is the Disability Casting Showcase. The idea is for theatre companies to have one casting session per play where they see only disabled actors. Opportunity knocks – for disabled actors, and for directors to see each character in their play through the lens of disability and to create work which puts an utterly new spin on things. (Imagine a King Lear with Cordelia played by a disabled actress…)

Let’s face it, it’s all about bums on seats – and there is a great diversity of bums out there.

So don’t play us, pay us!!