Kick the doors open!
Simon Jarrett interviews Sarah Gordy, keynote speaker at the Oska Bright film festival and an actress who is going places who happens to have Down’s syndrome. Quote: When she is acting, she says, she feels no nerves.
“We need to fight to kick the doors open for disabled people in the arts. Make a noise, shout, scream, do whatever it takes.” That was the nessage actress Sarah Gordy delivered to the Oska Bright Film Festival.
You can feel star quality when she sashays in. Sarah has played high-profile roles in Upstairs Downstairs and Call the Midwife and was star speaker at the festival. In making that rousing call for the barriers that surround the arts to be brought crashing down she also called on journalists to highlight and promote the work of actors with learning disabilities and for TV commissioners to create more positive role models by ensuring that more actors with learning disabilities are seen on TV.
It was all about talented actors with learning disabilities being taken seriously in their own right and seen as part of the mainstream, rather than as people who will benefit from a bit of segregated drama therapy.
The mainstream is where Sarah Gordy has always seen herself and she has spent her professional life persuading others to see her in that way too. She is an actress, not, as her mother and acting coach Jane Gordy has put it, ‘professionally Down’s syndrome’.
In 2014 she made a huge breakthrough when she appeared in Crocodiles at Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, playing a character without a disability.
Challenges
In an interview with Community Living Sarah expressed the hope, and the belief, that things are at last changing. Having played ground-breaking roles in hugely popular primetime shows (her first break was in Peak Practice), more parts are coming her way, although it is too early to divulge them yet.
Her character in Call the Midwife certainly challenged. She played the part of a young woman with Down’s syndrome in the 1950s, made pregnant by her boyfriend (who had cerebral palsy). Was it a challenging role to play? Surprisingly, she didn’t find it so, helped, she believes, by a fantastic relationship with her co-star Colin Young and a script writer with great insight into disability. More difficult was the more passive role she played as Lady Pamela Holland in Upstairs Downstairs, a part further removed from her effervescent personality.
Shifting attitudes
Her parts have brought out and highlighted historical attitudes to disability and indicate that attitudes are starting to shift. She recalls how, as a girl, she always entertained her family. When she is acting, she says, she feels no nerves. She is at home on the stage or in front of the camera, although auditions can make her tremble.
Our interview is interrupted by requests for autographs, which she handles kindly and with aplomb. Clearly, acting, and the stardom that goes with it, are in her blood, and she is a generous role model for others.
Watch out – we are all going to see plenty more of Sarah Gordy
