Milestone play a personal win for actor with disability

In her script for Cost of Living, carer turned playwright Martyna Majok stipulates its characters with disability must be played by actors who themselves live with disability.

Despite a popular run on Broadway, not to mention a 2018 Pulitzer win, main-stage theatre companies had been reluctant to produce the play.

"It's a turning point for the industry and I'm so proud to have been part of it," actor Kate Hood, who plays a leading role in the local production, told AAP.

"There's an assumption that if you're disabled, you are not going to be capable of playing a role in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play."

Hood plays Ani, who lives with disability, opposite three-time Olivier award winner Philip Quast as her ex-partner Eddie. Dan Daw plays wealthy PhD student John who has cerebral palsy, with Zoe de Plevitz as his carer Jess.

The Queensland Theatre Company co-production with Sydney Theatre Company is currently playing in Brisbane to standing ovations and will move to Sydney later in July, ahead of a separate Melbourne production that opens in September.

Cost of Living is the first main-stage production in Australia with half its performers who live with disability, according to Queensland Theatre.

For Hood the production is not just an industry milestone, but an important moment for her personally.

Hood enjoyed a 25-year career in theatre and television (she was the last top dog in the final episode of long-running TV drama Prisoner) until she was diagnosed with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia in 2002.

Over the next decade, she went from needing a walking stick to using a wheelchair.

Suddenly, many of the parts she relied on as a jobbing actor were closed to her. There was some voiceover work, but certainly no more musical theatre auditions.

"That, I think, is shocking, because I was pretty well known actually," said Hood.

"I love my industry, I don't want to do finger-pointing, but it's got to be said that we need to change a few things - disability is simply part of the human condition."

Her personal experience resembles in some ways that of her character because Like Ani, she had to adjust to disability by herself.

Almost 20 per cent of Australians live with a disability yet for something so common, disability is rarely seen on our stages and screens.

On top of this, says Hood, it's still common for any actor to play the part of a character with disability, something she is determined to put an end to.

Hood started her own company, Raspberry Ripple (rhyming Cockney slang for cripple), to produce theatre featuring actors both with and without disability working alongside each other.

Considering the dramatic possibilities of including disabled actors in a production (Hood imagines what King Lear starring a disabled Cordelia might be like) can make just about any show fundamentally better, she said.

Yet in the two decades she has been rebuilding her career, industry-wide progress has been slow to the point where Australia is exporting its major talent.

Actor and director Dan Daw, who co-directed Cost of Living with Priscilla Jackman (RBG: Of Many, One), began his career with South Australia's Restless Dance Theatre.

He's since started his own production company in the UK, where there are more opportunities.

Hood would like to see the nation's top drama schools hire disabled teachers and be held to quotas for training disabled performers.

Australian casting directors also need to open their minds to promoting such talent.

"My ideal world is that the character of the office worker or the mother or father, the murderer or the psychoanalyst, can be played by a person with a disability," she said.

Cost of Living plays at the Billie Brown Theatre until July 13 and Sydney's Wharf 1 Theatre from July 18 to August 18, ahead of a separate production at Melbourne's Southbank Theatre from September 14 to October 19.

Australian Associated Press