Disability and the Performing Arts
Nabil Shaban answers to DfEE questions about problems for disabled performers gaining employment (continued)
Question 4 Do performers with certain types of disabilities find it more difficult to find
employment?.....
YES
Which disabilities?.....
People with severe facial disfigurement.....or with severe speech impairment.... or body deformities.
Wheelchair users if they “look” disabled. People who need walking aids.
Please explain:
Disabled performers who are “attractive-looking” and can look as if they might be “able-bodied” in a
wheelchair.....or can look as they are “normal”....have greater employment opportunities.... e.g. deaf
people, blind people, people who normal mobility but have a deformed hand or arms, people with a
slight walking impairment (the actor, Jasper Britten is a case in point....although of course, he has the
added advantage of having a famous actor father). Basically, those disabilities that have less
difficulty finding employment are ones where negative Body Fascist criteria least apply.
Also, some disabilities require less expenditure to facilitate access, so producers looking to keep
costs or practical inconveniences down, will, if they MUST employ a disabled performer, opt for the
cheapest disability.....
Question 5 If you consider there are barriers for disabled performers in finding suitable
employment, do you have any suggestions about how this could be resolved?
A combination of carrot and stick is probably the most effective way of removing barriersfor disabled
performers in finding suitable employment. Over the past twenty years, subsidies, grants, funding
from regional arts boards and Arts Councils, and stipulations from the Lottery has done more to
enable disabled people to become professionally involved in the performing arts. If the Arts Council
of England didn’t fund the Graeae Theatre Company of Disabled Performers, most of today’s
disabled actors would never have got their first break. Equally, if the Scottish Arts Council and the
Lottery Fund weren’t committed to promoting disabled people’s employment in the theatre,
Edinburgh’s Theatre Workshop wouldn’t be able to create Britain’s first fully intergrated professional
theatre, offering two years contracts to five disabled actors and five non-disabled actors.
Subsidies, grants, tax breaks, funding incentives from the State, from arts bodies and trusts, the Film
Council, commercial sponsorship are all carrots to encourage the employment of disabled
performers. But what about the stick? The Anti-discrimination legislation should allow disabled
people to sue or prosecute producers if non-acceptance for performing role is the result of Body
Fascist prejudice. Also, producers and directors should be penalised for casting a non-disabled
person in the role of a disabled character, since disabled performers are being deprived of
employment. There should be a Discrimination Surcharge, which could be collected to fund projects
giving employment to disabled performers. For example, since 10 percent of the population is said to
be disabled, then one ought to see a 10 percent presence of disabled people in theatre, film and
television productions. Equally, 10 percent of television commercials should include disabled
performers. ITV companies, the BBC, Channel Four, organisations like the Institute of Practioners in
Advertising, should have their annual output assessed for equal disabled representation....if disabled
performers are found to be less than 10 percent present, then the offending organisations should be
financially penalised. Repetitive offenders should not have their franchise renewed.
Equally, as with Lottery funding, grants for project or revenue funding should only be given on the
condition that a minimum of 10 percent of the cast is made up disabled performers. Thus, companies
like the RSC, and the Royal National Theatre should not receive state subsidy if they do not
significantly include disabled performers in their productions. Why should I as a disabled person pay
taxes to help fund so-called national theatre (after all, I am part of the nation) which has no bearing
on my own life, when I don’t see people like on the stage, telling stories that I can identify with.
Similarly, why should I pay a television license fee, when the bulk of the BBC content has so little
relevence to me. I don’t want to see endless dramas, soaps, comedies where good-looking, white,
able-bodied males always having relationships. It just makes me feel inferior, and hate being
disabled, which is something I cannot change. Performing arts today, television commercials etc
bend over backwards to redress the balance with respect to gender representation. Generally, it is
not good practise to depict women in such a way that women viewers are made to feel inferior or
inadequate. In fact, one often finds, particularly in a tv commercial, the female character proving to
be smarter than the male counterpart....this is known as positive compensatory stereotyping....and it
is currently all the rage in gender role reversal politics. To a lesser extent, we see the same treatment
within the racial context. Black performers are far more in evidence and play more positive roles than
say 15 years ago. Sadly, the same cannot be said for disabled performers, not as a representative
ratio. It is hard to believe that it is nearly 20 years since the International Year of Disabled People
(IYDP 1981), and yet there seems to be so little progress with respect to a just and fair
representation of disabled people in the performing arts. The main reason for this retardation is the
two pronged Thatcherite attack of cut backs in social services, and draconian reduction of arts
funding; and the “dumbing-down” and over-emphasis of commercial viability of the media output.
Question 6 Are there any other comments you would wish to make to help inform
discussions at the seminar?
Historically, religion, charity, the medical profession and literature and the arts are all responsible for
promoting negative attitudes towards disabled people.....
Religion suggests that disabled people are not whole people who need to be healed, are
blemished people, described in the Old Testament as an abomination in the sight of God...disability
is often portrayed as the result of a sin, bad karma, a punishment from God...disabled people are
often despised, or pitied because of certain religious beliefs. Generally, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam,
Judaism...do not enable disabled people to feel good about themselves.
Charity perpetuates negative responses to disabled people because in order to appeal for
money, the disabled person must appear pitiful, needy, inferior, begging, pathetic....what charity does
to persuade people to voluntarily part with money, is massage their egos, allow them to feel superior
in relation to the recepient....this is their reward for making a donation....a reward at the expense of
the needy disabled person, who is having to degrade themselves so that the benefactor can feel
good.
Medical Profession sees the disability and not the person...objectifies the individual as a
disease, as a clinical problem, seeks wholeness, exploits the disabled person as a “lab rat”, as a
meal ticket to international conferences, doctors perceive disabled people in terms of what they
cannot do as opposed to what they can do, what the person lacks rather than capabilities, the
disabled person is defined in terms of their physiological abberations. The medical model does not
allow the disabled person to feel good about themselves.
Literature and the Arts throughout the ages and across cultures generally present a
negative image of disabled people. Hunchbacks, dwarfs, scarred or deformed people, cripples are
used in fairy tales, myths and legends, fiction to denote evil or other negative human qualities such
as cowardice, impotency, greed, envy, revengefulness. From Richard the Third to Captain Hook,
from Long John Silver to Quasimodo, from Rumplestiltskin to the Ugly Sisters....from the cuckolded
paraplegic in Lady Chatterly’s Lover to James Bond villain Dr. No. From Bosch to Breughul, Hell is
peopled with the deformed. In the modern era, the tradition is continued with the movies and theatre,
perpetuating the myth of deformity and disability as a metaphor for evil...e.g. Scar in “The Lion King”,
“The Phantom of the Opera”, the scar-faced bad Yank in “Platoon”, Freddy Kreuger in “Nightmare on
Elm Street” and so on. Our literary and artistic culture does not make it easy for disabled people to
be comfortable with their condition.
Even the history books maginalize the persecution and attempted systematic extermination of people
with disabilities. Compared to what has been written and portrayed about the Jewish Holocaust, how
many books, plays, films and television dramas can be named depicting the Nazi Euthanazia
Program....where the gas chambers were originally designed and constructed to destroy “useless
eaters”, Hitler’s term for the sick, crippled, deformed, the genetically degenerate. The Disabled
Holocaust has been side-lined because society would still like to see us, disabled people, dead.
And now, the euthanazia debate, the genetic sciences with the eugenic implications add salt to the
wounds. Today, more than ever, we disabled are being made to feel we do not deserve to exist...with
the Fertilsation and Embryology Bill allowing disabled foetuses to be aborted at full term, implying
that if a foetus is deformed or disabled, it is not a human life worthy of life....is not even human....with
genetic reseach, genetic engineering, genetic and embryo screening paving the way for Genetic
Cleansing....disabled people are being made to feel more inferior than ever...society is being
encouraged to view disabled people as inferior, a blot on the landscape, undesirable, life unworthy of
life.
It is not surprising, given all this prejudice stacked against disabled people, that disabled performers
have difficulties in gaining employment in the areas of the performing arts. It is not surprising that
producers of the performing arts have negative attitudes towards disabled performers....that sponsors
and investors and broadcasters can not see the commercial value of disabled performers...because
the public for centuries have been conditioned to regard disability in a negative, bleak, depressing
and loathsome light...that two legs good....one or no leg, BAD....
Dr. Nabil Shaban
Nabil Shaban as Volpone
in Graeae Theatre Company's 1996 production of "Fleshfly"
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