actress Rose Ayling-Ellis takes a role in
EastEnders and wins Strictly. Or when
Coda, about a deaf family, wins the best
picture Oscar or the wheelchair user Liz
Carr stars in Silent Witness or the tetra-
plegic actor George Robinson is the
love interest in Sex Education. It makes
people start to include people with dis-
abilities in their thinking; the key now,
Hughes says, is to extend those exam-
ples so that disabled people are auto-
matically part of the world we see rep-
resented on stage or screen whether
their disability is mentioned or not.
This has always been his view. As an
outgoing child — “I like the sound of my
own voice, as you may have noticed”
— with supportive parents (his mother
was a maths teacher, his father a busi-
ness consultant), it never occurred to
him that he couldn’t be an actor. It was
only when he left the Royal Welsh Col-
lege of Music and Drama that the scale
of his ambition struck him.
“I didn’t have an agent, and I started
to feel the dread of being a disabled
actor. I kept having these conversations
in my head: ‘Are you going to break the
mould? How many disabled actors do
you know?’ At that time I felt there
were zero. I was scared.”
He found work, first in radio drama,
then — after a long break — with the
Graeae Theatre Company of deaf and
disabled actors and theatre-makers.
There he starred in Jack Thorne’s The
Solid Life of Sugar Water, and went on to
land a part in Netflix’s drama The Inno-
cents. He also plays Ruairi, Brian’s ille-
gitimate son, in Radio 4’s The Archers.
His breakthrough in terms of how he
saw himself came last year when he
starred in Thorne’s TV drama Then
Barbara Met Alan, about the founders
of the Disabled People’s Direct Action
Network. “It changed why I am an
actor,” he says quietly. “Not so much
for the pat on the head or the applause,
but because I am a disabled body.
There is real power in the incidental
nature of having disability just there.”
He sees himself as being part of a
new generation, such as Ruth Madeley,
Daniel Monks and Melissa Johns, who
are broadening the roles that disabled
actors can play and inspiring a new
generation to follow. “We obviously
need more disabled-led stories being
told by disabled people, but we should
also have disabled actors playing parts
such as Macbeth, or Iago, or Romeo or
whatever.” He grins. “Now I’m just nam-
ing all the parts that I want to play.”
For those who say disabled actors
can’t have it both ways — they can’t want
all the disabled characters yet want to
be eligible for all the other roles as well,
Hughes has the perfect, smiling answer.
“Non-disabled actors have been playing
all of them for ever. Now it’s time to
share it out.” cRichard III is at the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon,
Jun 23-Oct 22To prove a villain
Arthur Hughes and,
left, Antony Sher as
Richard III in 1984
SHAKESPEARE FIRSTS
First disabled actor to play
Richard III — Mat Fraser
The former punk drummer,
who was born with
underdeveloped arms after
his mother was prescribed
thalidomide during
pregnancy, played the role in
2017 for Northern Broadsides
at Hull Truck Theatre. “He
plays on his outsider statusbrilliantly, creating a sense of
a man bitterly aware that he
will never fit in,” the critic
Alfred Hickling said.First black actor
to play Othello —
Ira Aldridge
The pioneering
African-
Americanactor first played the role in
1825 and made his London
debut in 1833. No white actor
has played the part since
Michael Gambon in
Scarborough in 1990. Since
then the roll call of Othellos
has included Willard White,
David Harewood, Chiwetel
Eijofor, Adrian Lester
and Lenny Henry.ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE. INSET: DONALD COOPER/ALAMYALAMY29 May 2022 9