For over 20 years, Australian Kate Hood had a glistening career as an actress, writer and director. However in 2002, at age 43, her world crumbled when she was diagnosed with hereditary spastic paraplegia, a genetic disorder that progressively weakens the legs.
What followed was grief and uncertainty about her future. She said: “It immediately made me go into grief because I thought ‘what would this mean for my life?'”
“I clung on to the bits of the performing arts that I could do. I went to the recording studio and worked as a recording artist. I narrated in audio books and I worked in commercial voiceover studios,” she said.
Eventually, she stopped getting work offers.
“The message I got from my industry was that the door was closed to me now that I could no longer work on stage as an actor,” she said. “I felt like I dove in and hit the bottom of the pool.
“And I had nowhere to go but up from that point. Suddenly, I had nothing more to lose.”
Refusing to take no for an answer, Ms Hood started advocating for actors with disability, wrote her own productions and performed at festivals.
In 2016, she put up a stage performance with actors with disability as well as able-bodied ones. And in the same year, she formed Raspberry Ripple Productions, a disability-led theatre company. The company aims to create a pathway for artists with disability to join mainstream performing arts through stage and theatre productions.
Ms Hood, now 59, collaborates with others as a director, literary adviser, mentor and advocate of actors with disability. She sits on the board of Art Access Victoria, a leading arts and disability organisation in Australia.
Ms Hood was a key speaker on the opening day of the Arts and Disability International Conference in Singapore on 22 March 2018.
Organised by the National Arts Council and Very Special Arts Singapore, delegates to the two-day event explored ways to make art more accessible to people with disability.
In her keynote speech, Ms Hood said: “The barriers put in place by a world designed for normal people disable us far more than our bodies ever will.”
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Source: The Straits Times, 26 March 2018