Actor, writer, director, filmmaker, producer and singer Deborah Williams talks to DAIL about working in the States, disability arts and the never-ending struggle to find funding.

Tell us about your first experiences of disability arts.
I was late and all flustered for an audition at the old Diorama building in London.The director had one arm and I was like, ok, this might work. The piece (Soft Vengeance by April de Angelis), was about South Africa, Albie Sachs and about becoming disabled. I was working with a Deaf actor and a blind actor and I’d never met anyone who was Deaf or blind. As far as I was concerned Deaf people did not speak because that was how I was brought up and blind people didn’t see, so how were they going to act? So when I turned up in a rehearsal room with a blind person and a Deaf person and this director with one arm, it was quite a weird experience. But within seconds it was fine. And that is what has stayed with me, despite everything that has happened over the years.

Who inspired you to become an artist?
I was put on stage by one of my teachers because I was bullied at the age of ten. During auditions I took notes like everybody else and then, when it came to the lead, she said ‘oh no, Debbie’s got that role’. And that was when I found out that I had the lead in this play called Alvida and the Magician's Cape. I just took to it very easily.
Later, when I had finished school, I became absorbed in television and film. I basically learnt about acting by watching people like Cagney, Bette Davis, Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Ray Harrison Graham also inspired me because the minute he met me he said he was going to write a play for me. And he did - Sympathy for the Devil. It was the first play that looked at being Black and disabled and the first one to have a predominantly Black cast of disabled people in it as well as a Black writer and director. It made me think there was room for me in terms of disability. I kind of fell into disability arts. It wasn't my life plan to work in disability arts.

How did A Woman Called Jackie come about?
In Sympathy for the Devil I played a character called Jackie. She has a strong monologue at the end which is supposed to be cathartic but isn’t. She kind of collapses. Ray Harrison Graham, the director, told me to take the character and develop it. I wanted to tell her story, write about what she felt being away from home and falling in love with a disabled person and being enlightened about her situation. I wanted her to realise that she didn’t necessarily have to be someone else’s plaything, she could be an individual, have feelings and thoughts and all that stuff. I suppose you could say it is about the social model of disability and her enlightenment.

How did you fund it?
Jackson’s Lane commissioned it for £1,200, which enabled me to write, direct, produce, light, stage and perform it. I did it all myself, yeah. Thinking about it now…(Williams shakes her head) but at the time you just get on with it. Then, after a good response in America, I turned it into a proper show, oUo-maan (pronounced ‘woman’) which I took to the Edinburgh Festival in 2001 as part of Degenerate Disability Arts Festival. I ended up having to self-fund it because, again, I was trying to get money from Scope and other places and they all went ‘well there's nothing in it for you’. They didn’t understand what I, as a disabled person, would get from taking my show to Edinburgh (laughs). I played it for two weeks and got some fantastic reviews and responses.

Tell us about your film work.
In between leaving Walsall, where I come from, and starting work in theatre I trained at this bizarre place called ARTT International. I did film, television, theatre, radio, writing, producing, directing, performing, everything you can imagine. And that’s kind of where my film work started. Because my focus has been on theatre I have only done one short film until now. But I’ll be going to the Cannes Film Festival this year to pitch an idea for a feature film which is quite scary. Just now I’m doing some courses to update my directing and digital skills because once I’m working with the calibre of actor that I want to work with, I need to make sure I’m not taking the piss out of them. And vice versa.

What does your voice mean to you?
This is fascinating. Until the late 1990s I was never really aware of my voice physically, the actual sound of it and what it did. I would never listen to myself sing. Subconsciously my voice was being suppressed because of being disabled, black and a woman: all areas where I wasn’t allowed to speak my mind. Then, during a New Actors’ Workshop in America in 1999, I was asked to do a voice exercise where I had to raise my voice really loud and I couldn’t do it. People were asking why and eventually all the stuff came out and I was given permission, as it were, in that workshop to shout as loud as I wanted to for as long as I wanted to. And from that day I have had this whole other relationship with my voice. I am no longer scared of it and now understand it. I still don’t hear a problem with it because my voice is quite distinctly me but I know that other people have this ‘is she a man or is she a woman?’ thing going on. I’ve noticed that when men want to have sex with you it’s ‘sexy and sultry’ when they don’t, it’s ‘you’re a bloke’. It’s quite an interesting situation to be in because, if I find someone unattractive, I tend to lower my voice just that little bit deeper while flashing my stump about so they don’t cross the line basically.

You are involved with the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped (NTWH) in the US. Could you say more about that?
The relationship started in 1999 when I was working for London Disability Arts Forum (LDAF). The Dean of NTWH, who have a theatre in New York and a school in Maine on the east coast of America, got in touch and offered ten free scholarships for UK students. The dream of the organisation was to do mainstream musicals like Chicago and West Side Story on Broadway and in the West End with the entire cast made up of disabled people. In the first year I sent people like Tania Raabe and Colin Hambrook and others over. In the second year I sent another ten, one of whom was myself. I had left LDAF by this stage because I wanted to get back into my acting. And that is when the singing really started because the musical director there was fantastic. I did a song and a monologue as part of a showcase and they liked me so much that they invited me to New York that autumn. They then supported me for two and a half months when I put on A Woman Called Jackie. This year I’m their artist in residence for three months of the year, either in Maine or New York, which allows me to do my writing and spend time just thinking about stuff that I want to do. It’s an interesting relationship because American disability arts is so different from the UK version.

How?
Well a lot of it is based on the idea of talent. In this country you can work in the arts if you are disabled and that is fine. If you are disabled or Black or whatever in the US, that’s all secondary because that idea of the American dream is actually extended to disabled people. So if you are talented and you are good at what you do, people will want to work with you and be around you.

What do you think of that?
For me as an artist it is great because you actually get the chance to write and do what you want. You are able to cross over. So last year I did Cabaret which I would never get to do in this country. I also did a monologue, Talking in Tongues by Winsome Pinnock, who is a Black English writer not often performed in this country. It was about being inter-sexed, having male and female genitalia, which was quite ironic for me. During that visit I also performed in a 15- minute play festival and got to write the short film I want to make along with writing and performing the songs for a new musical, called This is our Show. I would never get the chance to do all that here. Over there I don’t have to talk about disability or anything issue-based: it just comes out in the work that I do and the way that I perform. I don’t want to bang on about disability issues all the time because people get bored with it and, even though there are new ways of saying things, I feel at the moment that you are not really allowed to think about stuff in this country. If you don’t talk about disability then it is not disability art, and I’m like, where do I sit if I don’t want to talk about the one-armed woman all the time? What else am I supposed to do? Twiddle my thumb? Why can’t I talk about global warming or the war in Iraq or slave trade or exploitation when they are all a part of my life. America is America, good in very small doses but I find it quite invigorating to go over there.

What's your position on diversity and disability?
I have identified myself as a disabled artist for the past 12 years and really lived in that world without discussing the idea of being Black and a woman to its fullest effect. But to answer your question I don't know. I am on that journey of trying to discover what all of that means.

Does it frustrate you to have to fit in a box?
It's worn me down. I don’t understand why you have to position yourself somewhere and only in that place. It is exactly because we have been told to sit in one place and one place only that the struggles happen, whether about race, religion, sexuality or disability. You can’t bring anything else with you. For me that is the worst thing about engaging with disability arts. The European Year of Disabled People came and went and I didn’t do a single project because I was considered irrelevant. When I applied for funding from Artsadmin, the Innovate Project, Exposure Festival, Give it a Go Awards, Millennium Awards etc, I got pushed to one side and I don’t know why that is. Maybe my work is crap, maybe it isn't meant for a disabled audience, maybe it is to do with racism, maybe people just don’t know who I am. But no-one ever gives me enough respect to come back to me to say why it isn’t appropriate or what they are looking for. But I keep going, doing what I need and want to do. With or without support.

What happened with Cultural Diversity and Disability Project for Creative People?
While running consultation roadshows around the UK looking at what could be done for culturally diverse disabled arts professionals, there was a heated discussion with one of the participants. Two days later, what can only be described as a rant was published online. It was a personal attack on me and very one-sided. As a result I have lost work and still feel very distressed about it all. I’m now talking to my solicitors about the legal implications.

What are your creative priorities right now?
People are approaching me to do work now, which is great. I’m in discussions with Channel 4 to do a documentary about the Farelli brothers and Hollywood’s take on comedy and disability. In terms of my production company, Reality Productions, I am producing work and putting on events. I want my company to be a creative place for Asian, Black, Chinese people, people who want to do work but aren't being allowed to do it anywhere else. There’s also a possibility of a big British Council-sponsored festival next year, I’m quite excited about going out and finding people and bringing their work to London. And I’ll be taking oUo-maan to London later this year. I want to put all the bad and negative things behind me and get on with the business of creating art, being an artist and being me. Smiling, laughing and enjoying my life again, without any one else’s restrictions and limitations on me.