Feminists Don't Wear Pink (and other lies) by Scarlett Curtis

Author:Scarlett Curtis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241366097
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

JOY

noun; pronunciation

a person or thing that causes happiness

Despite allegations in the media that feminists are constantly angry and serious, 98% of feminists find joy in feminism, which is frankly a higher success rate than chocolate or kittens, as no one is technically allergic to feminism.

AN ODE TO IMPROV (AND POEHLER AND FEY)

BY

Amy Trigg

ACTOR

In the autumn of 2015 I was sitting in a car with my mum, trying to make excuses not to go into the big building to my right. We were in Central London and I was due to attend my first improv class. ‘Argh! What am I doing? Why am I doing this to myself? Mum! Why aren’t you listening to me? Gawd.’ My whining continued for half an hour until my mum gently reminded me that I was in fact not a four-year-old. I went into the class and my molecules were rearranged.

Time for a bit of backstory: my name is Amy Trigg. I am twenty-six years old and I was born with spina bifida. Spina bifida is an ancient benediction thrown upon the Trigg family by a spritely fairy named Grizelda, meaning all daughters in my family are born beautiful, talented, intelligent, honest and humble. Lol, jk, actually what happened was that my spine didn’t get its act together while I was chilling in the womb. Apparently nine months wasn’t enough time for this backbone. Hashtag Diva. As a disabled woman I naturally chose a career bursting with opportunities for wheelchair-using women. Oh, no, wait, I decided to be an actor.

I trained in musical theatre at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, where I was the first wheelchair user to graduate from their performance course. A guinea pig if you will. I got a lovely agent from the showcase and booked my first small TV gig quite soon after. Then it went a bit quiet. You see, I was only being seen for disabled characters, of which there are very few. I became an unwilling witness to the steady flow of non-disabled actors playing the few disabled characters that actually existed. Apparently I had been living in some kind of ‘Amy dreamland’, where I was not super aware about these things until they directly affected me. Classic white girl syndrome.

Let’s not get too crazy negative; I was being seen for roles. It’s just that most of the roles I was being seen for were not gender- or disability-specific. I often went to general auditions, which basically meant that I, a twenty-two-year-old, white, female wheelchair user, would audition alongside a blind forty-two-year-old black man for a part that didn’t even exist. It seemed that they were auditioning a disability, not an actor. They may as well have named the non-existent character ‘Tick Box the Third’.

My main obstacle is being disabled. My other obstacle is being a woman.

BEING DISABLED

MEANS THAT

SOMETIMES I CAN’T

GET IN THE ROOM.

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