Early History of Graeae
By Nabil Shaban
There's a very simple answer
as to "Why" Graeae was created - I wanted
to be an actor and there were absolutely no opportunities for disabled people
such as myself, who were wheelchair-users, with mobility issues, speech or
sight impairments to either receive training as actors or obtain professional
work, in the 1960s and 70s (There were opportunities for deaf people, in the
form of The Theatre of the Deaf, but they maintained a "Deaf Only"
policy). By god, I tried to get into this bloody "Body Fascist" (a term I
invented in 1983) industry. In 1969, when I was 16 and about to leave the
Special School in England, to serve a three year sentence in a Sheltered
Workshop for Cripples (that's what it felt like to me), I wrote to every drama
school in Britain, asking how a person in a wheelchair could become an actor?
Of course, I was hoping that at least, one, would reply suggesting that I apply
to join their drama course and be invited for an interview and audition.
Needless to say, without exception, I was told to get lost, forget it, you
haven't hope in hell. Which isn't surprising, given I had never seen a genuine
disabled person in a wheelchair acting in film and television. There were
plenty of films about disabled characters but they were always played by fakes,
non-disabled actors hoping to use the "disability ticket" to win a
cheap Oscar. Even today, Irish film
makers are still pretty backward when it comes to non-disabled actors "blacking-up"
by stealing disabled roles...you only have to think about "My Left
Foot" or "Inside I'm Dancing".
A couple of drama schools
tried to be positive in their negative responses by suggesting that I join the
local amateur dramatics or establish a play-reading group or write to the only person in
show business at that time in a wheelchair, Michael Flanders (he was part of
the Flanders and Swann comedy-singing Vaudeville duo in the 50s and 60s), for
advice.
Well, I followed up all the
pathetic "cop-out" suggestions, I was so
hungry, so desperate to be an actor. I approached my local "AM-Dram"
who were just as frightened of disabled people on
stage as the professionals. I was only allowed to join if I confined my
involvement to help paint the scenery or work as a prompt. At least, I fared
slightly better than a friend who used crutches, he was condescendingly allowed
by his local Am-Dram to play the role of a corpse. Also, I did set up a play
reading group of fellow disabled "wannabees".
I wrote and directed (and acted) a number of shows at the Sheltered Workshop. I
even took up training as a Methodist local preacher, so that I could find an
outlet for my desire to be a performer.
I was a hypocrite, didn't believe in the Bible, had stopped being a
Christian by the time I was 14, but I saw writing dramatic sermons and
performing "fire and brimstone" from a pulpit with a captive church
audience as the only opportunity I'd ever get of entering the entertainment
industry. Luckily, I saw the Light in time and abandoned the path that could
have led me to the hellish world of TV Evangelism.
Following some of the
advice, I wrote to Michael Flanders, who said the only way I would succeed in
becoming an actor, was to write my own material, create plays describing unique
experiences, which only I could play and not allow anyone to produce them
unless they gave me the roles I had written for
myself. It was this idea that
sowed the seeds of Graeae's genesis.
Why did Richard Tomlinson
and I set up Graeae Theatre Company of Disabled
People? To create opportunities for people like me to actively participate in
the performing arts, but not on the basis of drama therapy. Graeae
was not for occupational therapists or able-bodied careerist "do-gooders" who were
looking for an alternative to basket making. No, we created Graeae to be a professional theatre of the
highest artistic excellence. Secondly, we saw the need to change and subvert
public attitudes, misconceptions, disrupt myths about
disability and disabled people. And since it was our intention that Graeae be controlled by disabled people, we would be in the
most authoritative position to be most effective. We were in the business of not just educating
the public but also the media, broadcasters, film makers, theatres...all those
responsible for perpetuating the "Body Fascist" ideals and
stereotypes that endlessly and insiduously insinuate
only the "Perfect " and "Beautiful" have the right to live
and to be loved.
However, it was always Graeae's aim that whatever our message, it must be
conveyed in a way that is entertaining. That doesn't mean it has to be either
superficial or pander to the lowest common denominator but we found that humour
was an essential ingredient for any of our homespun disability issue-based
theatricals.
How was
“More than a businessman?” asked the Economics
tutor on the business studies course.
I replied “Absolutely.
Although I think the only way I am going to become an actor is to become a
businessman first and buy my own theatre and that way directors will have no
choice but to hire me as one of their actors in the cast”. This made Richard
Tomlinson laugh and said he looked forward to meeting me when I finally arrive
at the college.
Several months later, I arrived at Hereward and immediately sought out Richard to ascertain when his next drama
workshop was going to be. He told me I was too late to be in the current
production as it was already fully cast. However, I was welcome to come along
to rehearsals, anyway, to watch. I was a bit late for my first drama workshop
attendance, 5 or 10 minutes, whatever, and so rushed into the sports hall where
the workshop was being held. The doors were fairly stiff and heavy so I charged
my wheelchair into the buggers, sending them flying more than I had intended,
creating a huge noise which rudely interrupted the talk that Richard was giving
to the other drama students. He looked at me as I entered, somewhat embarrassed
but still with a dirty great grin on my face, and said “Well, if someone is
going to make an entry like that, they obviously have great aspiration to
dominate the stage.” As there were no vacancies left in the cast, richard asked if I could help with stage management. Naturally, I said yes. I
was determined to get my wheel in the door.
The show Richard and cast were devising, was
called “Never Mind You’ll Soon Get Better”. This was a very cliche
patronising expression that was often said to someone who had become disabled
as a result of an accident. In fact it was said to one of the actors in the
show who had broken his neck whilst diving off a pier and hitting some concrete
just below the surface. Because a doctor had said to him "Well, never mind
you’ll soon get better", Richard thought it would be a great title for the
show.
Not only did the show
recreate the story of the diving accident but also those of other students,
such as a woman rendered paraplegic from a car accident. One of my tasks as
stage manager was to create special sound effects of these various accidents.
The performances of
"Never Mind You'll Soon Get Better" (Christmas 1973) were very well
received amongst the students, who were gratified to find stories like theirs
being authentically portrayed on stage. However, the script needed tightening up and a lot more
comedy injected. Richard decided to do another version, a sequel I suppose to
Never Mind You’ll Soon Get Better. and
thus, our second show “Ready Salted Crips” was
conceived. "Crips" being an abbreviation
for "cripples". It was at
“Ready Salted Crips",
also devised by us. and, again, was about disability, disabled people’s
experience of disability, their perceptions of the non-disabled world’s
attitudes towards themselves. The show consisted of a number of sketches focusing on
disabled people's perspectives and experiences of education (which was usually
second-class), the medical profession and model, family, parents, employment,
lack of employment. However, our aim was to make the show as jokey and entertaining as possible, but retaining elements
of melodrama, pathos and tragedy. Our comedy influences at the time were Monty
Python, the Goons and the Goodies. For example, with our Funny Walks
competition sketch and Miss Crippled Universe, we ripped off Pythons "Ministry of Silly
Walks" and took the piss out of mainstream culture's body fascist
attitudes towards disability.
The cast of “Ready Salted Crips”
Dave Maxwell, Phil Ridler,
Maggie, Gill Sloe, Hazel Peazeley, Kate Mathers
And Nabil Shaban in front
The show's content was also
influenced by Richard’s interest in vaudeville, jazz and blues. One of the most
popular songs we created was Blind, Crippled and Black, a parody of Young,
Gifted and Black, continued to be a show stopper 7 years later when "Ready
Salted Crips" metamorphosed into
"Sideshow", Graeae's first show.
Ready Salted Crips (Spring 1974) became so popular, we took it on tour
around our local county of Warwick, performing it in schools, colleges, amateur
dramatic groups, Coventry cathedral and Warwick University. Our experience of audiences reaction and enthusiasm for what we were doing,
convinced us that we, disabled people definitely had something to contribute to
society in terms of telling our story in our own words and in terms of our own
entertainment values and abilities.
After Ready Salted Crips we did one more show at Hereward,
Harold Pinter’s The
Dumb Waiter. It was a deliberate choice to do something from the mainstream. At
first, we thought of doing a futuristic, post-apocalyptic version of Macbeth,
in a world dominated by disabled mutants after a nuclear holocaust, with me in
the title role. Unfortunately, because of the pressure of coursework and exams,
our drama group became so severely reduced, we could
only do a two-hander play. Pinter's play about a pair of assassins seemed a
perfect vehicle for a couple of disabled malcontents. Again, we successfully
toured Warwickshire with The Dumb Waiter (Spring 1975) and armed with fantastic
reviews from the local press, Richard and I knew we couldn’t stop there.
But it was the Summer of 1975 and time for both Richard and I to leave Hereward. I was going to
“Okay, I got the point”
Richard said, “Don’t worry, I promise, you'll be one of the actors in the
shows.”
“Good, just so long as you know.” I grumbled
into my tumble-mumble beard.
And that was the beginning
of the Graeae Conspiracy to subvert and revolutionize
the world of performing arts.
Richard and I kept in touch
with each other (he had successfully directed some of the American disabled
students in a Yank production of
"Sideshow", our 1975 half-developed revised incarnation of "Ready Salted Crips")and
when he got back from the States in 1976, he visited me at Surrey and we
started to hatch our plot and make plans as to how we were going to create the
disabled theatre company. We wondered whether or not we should buy a building,
not that we had any money but we thought perhaps we could try to raise the loot
to buy a building, turn it into a purpose built theatre for disabled people and
create the company within that building. Or should we go and just create a
company - not have a base to start with but have a show. What was going to be
the quickest, the cheapest, the most realistic? We
decided, probably, the most realistic and practical way was to create a company
first, collect a cast of disabled actors, write a show and then try to get
people to invite us to perform it. That was the plan we went for.
Then around 1977 / 78,
Richard rang me, saying that the United Nations had decided that 1981 would be
designated the International Year of Disabled People, IYDP, which would provide
a great opportunity for a theatre company of disabled performers to be
launched. We would be able to take advantage of world-wide interest in disabled
people, disability issues, and perhaps we would get invited to perform at far
more venues and celebrations than otherwise. He reckoned it might be easier to
get funds for the company during that fortuitous year.
I said, “Yes, sounds like a great idea, but we
need to get the theatre company established just prior to the International
Year of Disabled People. We need to be imprinted on the media and public’s
consciousness to be sure of getting invites.” Thus it was decided to try to
make sure that our company was up and running within the year of 1980.
Richard, a great believer
that we should have a goal to aim for, suggested that perhaps we should try to
get a tour of a show in the
I said, great but what show
are we going to take? Something from the mainstream?
Or do we create something new and original? Something that is specifically about
us, i.e. disabled people? Richard thought that since we already had a show,
Side Show, that had begun life at Hereward, been given a test
run in the
Another important reason for
having the company established before the middle of 1980,
was that during that year there was to be an international conference on
disability and rehabilitation in
As planned, Richard went and
wrote to the organisers of the international conference in
The first thing we decided
we had to do was to find a name for this company. We didn’t want to call it the
Disabled Theatre Company but I felt it was essential that the name to have a
reference to disability. Richard believed it should be a name from the
Classics, something, perhaps from the Greeks (“So it will sound posh?” I
teased). We both agreed the name should derive specifically from the world of
myths and legends. The reason we finally settled on Greek mythology was that,
first of all, the Greeks were pioneers in theatre and we believed that we would
be pioneers in disability theatre. Secondly because we wanted something from
mythology since myths and legends contained many disabled people, represented
as half human half animal, monsters, strange creatures, freaks. Usually these
disabled characters or weird creatures were figures of horror or comedy and
never seen as normal people. There was always some kind of stereotyping, some
kind of abuse of the nature of disabled people in mythology. They were often
represented as being ill omens or creators of evil. Therefore the idea of using
something from mythology to dispel and shatter the misconceptions and myths
about disability, was very important and we wanted to
contain that notion within the name of this embryonic theatre company. We were
in the business of myth breaking.
So what character, what name
from the Greek mythology would we use? We thought about Cyclops, the one eyed
giant, but we thought that was a bit too grotesque, crass, a
bit crude. It could look like we were being self-parodying or mocking and so,
not taking the concept seriously. There was also Centaur theatre company, half
horse, half man but I was sure people would be confused and keep calling us the
“Centre Theatre Coompany” Other possibilities were
Minotaur, a man with a bull’s head, the Satyr, horned human with a goat’s
bottom (I know some of our work was satirical but...) and so on. But none of
these really quite worked. Then I said to Richard, what about these three
sisters who had one eye and one tooth between them, who were related to Medusa
and the Gorgons whom Perseus had been given the
mission of killing? He needed information as to where they were and how he
could kill her and the only people who knew were these three cousins of the
Gorgons. I didn’t know what their name was but I had a feeling that whatever
the name was, it would be an ideal name to give to our theatre company. So
Richard went off and did some research and found that the name was Graeae. Excitedly, we both agreed that that just had to be
the name to give a theatre of disabled people. Thus, the Graeae Theatre Company spoken into existence.
There were many reasons for
choosing that name. First, there was controversy as to how it should be spelt
and how it should be pronounced. There’s nothing like controversy for
imprinting a concept onto people’s memory, making us stand out. It also meant
that with intrigue around the name, there was always something to talk about when
reporters, journalists interviewed us and said “But why Graeae?”
And of course we would have a long story to tell about it. And how do you say
it? We would say, you know, as in “grey eye”. Thus, it was easy for people to
remember us. Choosing this name and its spelling and its
particular way of pronouncing it, made us memorable.
Secondly, in the story of
the Graeae, Perseus is
unable to persuade the three sisters to give him the necessary information, so
he steals the eye and tooth from them and blackmails them, refusing to return
their vital bodily parts until they tell him how he can find the Gorgon,
Medusa, and how she may be killed. But, of course, the dirty rat, he doesn’t
give the eye and tooth back and leaves them to suffer.
For me there is obviously a
number of morals to the tale, first of all if the Graeae
had not been so dependent on their impairment in the sense that they allowed
the negative aspects of their impairment to rule their life,.if they had learned
to cope as blind or partially sighted people, rather than depending on
one eye which they had to share between them, they couldn’t have been taken
advantage of by Perseus, (in my opinion, the able
bodied villain of the piece). On the other hand, however, this Trinity of
sisters with impairment did suggest how disabled people needed to work
together, and that, by uniting as one, they could be solid and so, advance
their cause. And thirdly, it says, you mustn’t be too trusting of non-disabled
people and don’t rely too much on them if you want to achieve your ambitions.
We began recruiting our cast in the summer of
1979. It wasn’t easy to find disabled people foolhardy enough to want to risk a
life in the theatre, a precarious profession at the best of times. By winter,
we managed to assemble a cast of 6 performers, 3 men, 3 women, each of us with
a different impairment, ranging from muscular dystrophy to cerebral palsy, spina bifida to brittle bones, partially-sighted to
epilepsy.
Our rehearsals began at the Diarama,
Richard Tomlinson directs SIDESHOW in
1980
After four months, the show was ready
for our premiere performance in May of 1980 at my old university at
Graeae’s first show,
“SIDESHOW” with Jag Plah, Will Kennan
and Marion Saunders - 1980
As it happens, despite all
our attempts to shock and outrage, we were loved by everyone. Bloody annoying, that. To our astonishment, we got great
reviews in the
When we got back to
This grand tour of the
Midlands, South of England and Wales from August of 1980, took us right up to
the beginning of December, included various fringe venues in London, including
the Soho Poly Theatre, the Oval and Jackson’s Lane, which immediately attracted
attention of the national media so we were finding ourselves having reviews in
the Guardian, in the Times and in the Observer. As a consequence of this press
attention, television
became interested and we found that there were rival TV companies competing for
our attention, wanted exclusivity for their arts programmes. Finally, we ended
up doing a special Arena documentary for the BBC, which was transmitted
January, 1981 to coincide with the opening of the International Year of
Disabled People.
The
Also in January 1981 we had
our first opportunity to perform professionally (i.e. we
all got paid proper Equity wages) for a week at
Nabil Shaban 6th July 2006