Dogma Submission: Interview with Nabil Shaban – actor, writer and producer

22 January 2008

By Jez Strickley

 

Nabil Shaban as Hamlet....photograph by Leila Romaya

Given a choice between a desk job and training to become an actor, many would choose the former, unarguably easier option.  For Nabil Shaban the easier option is a non-starter.  His unquenchable energy and determination led him first to pursue a career in acting – an ambition which has seen him appear in theatre, film and television – and then in script writing and documentary producing.  Co-founder of the disabled theatre company ‘Graeae’, Shaban has tirelessly worked to promote disabled rights, and his recently published play ‘The First To Go’ dramatically signals the incipient dangers of turning a blind to the shadow of eugenics: a contemporary reality which many believe to be exclusively confined to history.

                                    

Dogma:  You have been described as a political actor.  Does this label influence your choice of roles?  And, perhaps more crucially, does it affect the variety of parts you are offered?

Nabil Shaban: I chose to be a political actor.  Luckily by virtue of being a visibly disabled actor i.e. an obvious wheelchair-user, the roles I play immediately become politicised because the status quo is automatically being subverted.  Audiences are being forced to reassess their previously held misconceptions of disabled people when they see a disabled actor play a role not normally associated with someone who had been designated inferior or inadequate or powerless.  Hamlet may not in normal circumstances be considered a political role…but it becomes one as soon it is played by someone defined as  “socially unacceptable” for the role.

If I am being offered a role, I will take into account the political ramifications of accepting it.  If I think it will have a detrimental effect on how society perceive disabled people or reinforces the negative stereotype…i.e. if I can feel uncomfortable with how people will prejudge me personally as a consequence…then I will refuse the role.  That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t play “bad guys” but I’d be a bad guy because I’m a bad guy…not because I’m disabled. 

I am a political actor because I want to help change the world for the better…for all…not just for the disabled minority.  So, I willingly accept roles in plays which seek to redress the balance with regard to any underdog or oppressed group who is being denied their human rights, being exploited…I am happiest when given the opportunity to perform in plays where injustices are being exposed…so I felt my acting had meaning when I was doing plays about Northern Ireland or Palestine or torture etc.  I am not that interested in being an actor, just for the sake of being an actor…it must be a campaigning vehicle for social and political change.  An ex-agent of mine, once told me in exasperation (after I’d refused yet another “anti-disabled” role) to decide if I was an actor or campaigner.  I told him I was a campaigner first and actor second.  I suspect if I wasn’t disabled, I probably wouldn’t be an actor.

I don’t get offered many jobs nowadays.  In fact, the only people who have offered me real acting work for the past ten years is Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh…and they generally do political or socially-relevant theatre…which is probably why they consistently offer me work.  No one else does.  Probably because I am a political animal.  It is possible, for example, the BBC have me blacklisted because of my radical left-wing and anti-war politics.  That may be why under the current warmongering climate, I will not be asked to return as Sil in the new Doctor Who series.  If I am universally labelled as a “political actor”, that may explain why I don’t get offered much work because there is deliberately very little politics or “issue-based” theatre or television work around.  The State is trying to remove dissent from the Arts and Entertainment industries.

 

Dogma:  As a disabled performer you co-founded ‘Graeae’ on the basis that, at the turn of the 1980s, there simply wasn’t a theatre company available for disabled performers.  Is the acting industry of the early twenty-first century any more disposed towards disability than the one you first encountered in the 1970s?

Nabil Shaban: To a small degree, there has been an improvement.  There are certainly more disabled people today who are getting opportunities to work professionally as performers…and there is a lot of talk from the Government, from the Arts Councils and from the Broadcasters but, the reality is that it is mostly talk.  These people have been doing nothing but talk in the last ten years. But the proof of the pudding…as they say…and look at the film industry, television and theatre and ask yourself…just how often do you see a disabled person represented or in the cast…or playing the leading the role.  The answer is hardly ever.  In fact, in the last ten years, it has actually got worse for disabled performers…because television has massively cut back in its drama production and increasingly makes programmes to pander for the lowest common denominator.  British culture today is deliberately being Americanised i.e. “dumbed-down”, the reason being those who rule us do not want an intelligent, questioning, critical public…they just want mindless consumers, who will accept zero public healthcare and no social services or amenities, while allowing the governments to squander tax-payers money on military spending and making Imperialist war.  In the last six months we have seen savage cuts in Arts funding, and recently nearly all the disability arts organisations have been told they will no longer be funded.  Recently, I was invited to take part in a disability arts led debate, proposing that “Disability Arts should be dead and buried in the 21st century”.  I questioned the motives behind the holding of this debate and suspected that the Arts Council had been pushed by the Government, to encourage disabled artists to vote themselves out of enjoying public funding.  I spoke my suspicions, suggesting that this was a conspiracy by the government which needed to steal from Health and Culture, money to pay for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for future wars in Iran and Pakistan.  The government has a secret slogan very similar to Hitler’s just before the war – “Guns Before Art” (Hitler’s was “Guns Before Butter” – given time and that will also be the British government’s slogan).  Since the debate, which actually voted against the motion (helped by speeches from people like me), the disability arts organisation have just been informed they are to be cut 100%…that’s their punishment for not upholding the motion “Disability Arts should be dead and buried in the 21st century”.  So, I’m afraid the future for disabled performers is looking bleak again.  And not just for disabled performers or disabled people as a whole…but for Britain in general.  We are slipping back in time, regressing rather progressing.  We are returning to those nasty, vicious, Imperialist Victorian Values that Thatcher so yearned for…the kind of world people like Dickens, Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell railed against.  I also have a suspicion that the reason the Government no longer wants to fund disability arts is because they have a secret agenda to get rid of disabled people…this is why my play ‘The First To Go’ is a timely warning.

 

Dogma:  In the appendix to ‘The First To Go’ you elaborate upon ‘Body Fascism’, a term which you yourself coined and which “…places value on a person’s worth on the basis of physical appearance or attributes…” (‘Disability and the Performing Arts – There is No Fair Play’ in ‘The First To Go’, Sirius Book Works publishing, 2007; p. 146)  It is a term which conjures up considerable power.  Have you encountered criticism or the like on account of coining this concept?

Nabil Shaban: Of course, in the beginning, during the middle Eighties, I did, especially from the media and entertainment industries, and from certain art historians and academics, who liked to argue that notions of “beauty” are absolute and universal, as opposed to relative and socially expedient.  Such people are basically “Platonists”.  They are also people who are lazy-thinkers, who like to think in terms of clichés, stereotypes and metaphors.  Film-makers and visual-artists are particularly susceptible to using “body fascist” short-cuts for character portrayal.

 

Dogma:  Your latest acting role is as the lead, Hamm, in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Endgame’, directed by Robert Rae (see www.theatre-workshop.com).  Do you think that, in the main, disabled performers are given a better deal by theatre than television?  And, if so, why?

Nabil Shaban: Theatre production is cheaper than TV…also television reaches much bigger audiences who from the broadcasters’ blinkered view are not interested in being intellectually or artistically challenged.  They believe the mass audience will switch channels if they see genuine disabled people, especially when they are not expecting it.  If disabled people are going to be shown on TV, there is usually plenty of forewarning…i.e. screened late at night or placed in a specialist or ghetto slot.  Theatre does not require such huge investment…i.e. small-scale or fringe.  You won’t find many, if any, disabled people in the major Rep companies, on the West End stages or performing with the RSC, the Royal National Theatre (my presence in the 1998 National Theatre production of “Haroun” was an aberration, which they made sure since that they never made that mistake again).  These theatres are primarily concerned with “bums on seats” and disabled performers or disability issues are not considered commercial.  When theatre is heavily subsidised and can afford to be experimental, adventurous either in its casting or subject matter, then we may tend to see disabled performers.  Television today, with audience ratings and higher costs at stake, is not prepared to take risks.  This was the reasoning why Granada TV, back in 1988, vetoed the choice of the independent TV company who wanted to cast me in the title role of a seven-part children’s drama Microman.  They admitted that it was because I was in a wheelchair, which they feared would frighten the children and so lose audiences for subsequent episodes.  A one-off, they may have risked it, but they were not prepared to risk a huge investment in a seven-parter.

 

Dogma: Film-makers are well known for using non-disabled actors to play disabled character parts, a practice sometimes referred to as ‘cripping up’.  Why do you think this practice is not widely criticised by the media or cinema goers in general?

Nabil Shaban: Because the media and the general cinema goers are non-disabled.  They simply don’t care…just as they didn’t care about white actors “blacking up”.  Who voiced objections to Alec Guinness playing King Faisal or Anthony Quinn playing Adu Ibu in Lawrence of Arabia?  The producers only cast Omar Sharif because they couldn’t get such people as Alan Delon to play Ali.  No one white cared.  It doesn’t affect them.  They like to think only white people can be great actors.  That’s why Othello gets played by Olivier or Helen Mirren plays Cleopatra.  It’s only when Black and Asian audiences threaten to boycott, kick up a stink that the white dominated entertainment industries pay attention.  Disabled people must be more vociferous, boycott, picket, blockade, occupy cinemas and theatres.  Disrupt the BBC or other broadcasters’ head offices whenever a production of theirs “Crips Up”.  The point is the majority of the population is temporarily non-disabled, and they are the main spender…disabled people are at the lowest end of the income bracket…therefore the entertainment and media industries are primarily interested in producing non-disabled fodder for non-disabled markets…and if they perceive they will get a bigger return for investing in a “disabled story” by casting a non-disabled star in the “Crip” role, then they will shamelessly do so.  It will only change when us, disabled people start to become producers with economic clout and/or when we make it unprofitable for producers to “Crip Up”.

 

Dogma: ‘The First To Go’ examines the Disabled Holocaust.  Why do you think that this aspect of Nazi Germany’s killing fields has been largely neglected, especially in comparison to its Jewish counterpart?

Nabil Shaban: One reason is that disabled people have not for the past 60 years been owners of film studios, theatre directors, playwrights, novelists or have a nation with a government made up entirely of disabled people.  The Jews have. Many of the Hollywood film studios have been or continue to be owned and run by Jewish people…MGM, Steven Spielberg etc.  Television likewise…Lew and Michael Grade, just the tip of the iceberg.  The Royal National Theatre, the Soho theatre and the Tricycle are just some of the London theatres with Jewish artistic directors.  And of course, Israel as a nation state for Jews, has a vested interested in monopolising the Holocaust story.  I have no quarrel with Jewish people with power and money making sure the Jewish Holocaust story is constantly retold.  It’s not their job to tell the disabled holocaust story…it is the Disabled People’s…and until now, we have not been in an artistically or economically powerful position to do anything about it.  Well, the truth is, it wasn’t even talked about until the 1980s.  I must have been one of the first disabled people to learn of this secret history, and decide to rectify the imbalance.  However, the Arts Council would not have had the right political sensibility to consider funding such a play until the mid-1990s.

There is, of course, another more sinister reason why the Disabled Holocaust has been brushed under the carpet.  Disabled people are still feared, hated and loathed by society at large.  There is tremendous pressure to create a Brave New World of Perfect People.  This is why eugenic ideas and euthanasia policies keep raising their ugly heads, whether it takes the form of priorities in healthcare and medical insurance (e.g. girl with Downs Syndrome not considered important or “useful” enough to go on a waiting list for life-saving heart operation, or the deliberate starving to death of patients who are diagnosed as terminally ill…these are now current medical practices in the UK.  The BMA and the Paediatric Medical Professions no longer believe in upholding the Hippocratic Oath).  Enforced sterilisation, womb-removals from disabled people are again being considered acceptable.  The examples of creeping Nazi genetic cleansing are now legion…and the list will get longer, especially if Britain (and America, of course, which is spearheading the global hegemony) continues to become a nation constantly at war, needing ever greater slices of taxes for military spending.  It was Hitler’s insatiable need for war which accelerated the Euthanasia programme.  Clearly, since the Second World War, the justifiably-correct Jewish propaganda and constant reminders concerning the six million exterminated (backed by a Jewish nation state armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction) has made it generally unthinkable, untenable in Western Europe and the USA for any anti-Semitic thoughts or ideas of Jew Cleansing or genetic elimination of Semites etc.  Disabled people have never had such benefits…and with the inherent “Body Fascist” mentality of societies, the State has until now, made damn sure that the story of the Disabled Holocaust was kept under wraps, to stifle any chance of a moral straitjacket, that could prevent a politically-sanctioned re-emergence of eugenic policies.  It is a fact that people in Britain today are only beginning to learn of the Disabled Holocaust because Disabled artists have spoken and written about it.  This is another reason why the British Government is determined to strangle Disability Arts.

 

Dogma: Securing funding to produce ‘The First To Go’ proved to be a near Herculean feat.  Can you offer any explanation as to why it failed to garner more interest from the film and television industries?

Nabil Shaban: Some of the reasons can be found in my answers to previous questions.  However, the film and television industries could be interested if first, the leading disabled characters were played by non-disabled Hollywood stars or non-disabled British television stars (or even a non-disabled celebrity from Big Brother).  Whenever I obtain initial interest from a film producer in my “First To Go” film-script, they quickly lose interest when they realise I won’t sell the rights without a guarantee that the disabled romantic leads are played by disabled performers…this is also the case when I try to get a producer for my “Ivarr the Boneless” movie (the true story of a disabled Viking).  The second problem is both film and television (the UK Film Council and Scottish Screen included) don’t trust disabled people as writers…they feel they are incapable of writing scripts that could have appeal for wider audiences (i.e. non-disabled), so consequently they try to push their own favourite team of non-disabled writers to collaborate with you (i.e. takeover, steal, simplify, sanitise, water-down, “dumb-down” etc).  Issue-based film and television is not considered commercial…unless the lead character whom the mass audiences can identify with, is someone who looks like them…which is why a film about Apartheid South Africa must have a central sympathetic character who is white and American, or a film about Chile military coup or El Salvador or Blood Diamonds in Sierra Leone (the examples are legion) again must have a white American as the principal sympathetic character.  The same applies to most disability films.  The story has a non-disabled father, mother, husband or wife, son, daughter who has to learn something from the problems of a disabled person.  Our function in film and television is to aid the learning curve of the non-disabled star.  If the film or television producer can’t see a non-disabled angle, they are simply not interested.  They believe the product is impossible to market.

 

Dogma:  After several years of perseverance you were finally awarded government-based funding to produce ‘The First To Go’, which you later rejected on principle.  What was your reasoning behind this decision?

Nabil Shaban: In 2002, it was clear to me that the Blair Government was determined to make an illegal war on Iraq, based on a lie that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.  Bush with his Texan oil interests and his oil cronies of other multinational companies had greedy eyes for Middle Eastern oil (Iraqi and Iranian).  Also the US military-industrial complex with the demise of the Cold War, needed continued excuses for extortionate defence spending, reasons had to be found for continuing to rip off the American tax-payers.  Exploiting the trauma of 9/11, Bush and Blair set about their plans to invade and occupy Iraq.  For 9/11 read the burning of the Reichstag, Gulf of Tonkin, Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot and many others…all set-ups.  I began to oppose the Blair war-plans and performed at various anti-war benefit concerts during the autumn of 2002.  Even if it were true (which it wasn’t) that Saddam had WMDs, I didn’t believe we have the God-given right to invade Iraq for it.  Israel has nuclear weapons, South Africa under apartheid had them, France has them, Pakistan and India, yet we don’t threaten to invade these countries.  (Actually I do believe that a pretext will be found – sometime in the next eighteen months – for a joint US-UK invasion of Pakistan, one of the motives being, that country having nuclear weapons…  I suspect it is because we in the West feel uncomfortable about Muslims having WMDs.  But why stop there?  We are quite racist.  After Pakistan, India could well be next.  We don’t really like brown or black people having WMDs).

Back to the Government giving me £50,000 to produce ‘The First To Go’.  I was taken by surprise that my application had been successful.  This was December 2002.  The contract I had with the Government stated that “the agreement would be declared null and void if either party do anything to put the other party in disrepute”.  The Government had used me receiving the money as a photo opportunity…I was now implicated in government policies…in effect, I was now a Government employee.  When in March 2003, the British illegally invaded Iraq, I had to make a stand against this disgusting action.  Besides, the Government by pursuing such a crime were bringing my company, Sirius Pictures, into disrepute…this according to the terms of our contract declared it null and void, because I was now tainted by the Government’s illegality.  I also felt if I used the grant, I would be spending blood-money, money coming from a regime with blood on its hands.  I wanted no part of it.  Also, if I went ahead with the production, using the government hand-out, my hands would be tied should I decide to be involved in anti-war protests.  The Government could withdraw the money because they could claim I was now bringing them into disrepute with my civil disobedience, demos etc.  I had hoped that my example, my sacrifice would inspire others to follow suit…but no such luck…for one thing the national and international media, being propaganda organs of the US and UK ruling elites, chose to kill the story.

 

Dogma:  The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 permits the termination of disabled foetuses.  Is this sort of legislation the thin of a eugenics-oriented wedge, or is there a genuine moral case for aborting severely disabled foetuses?

 

Nabil Shaban: Yes to first, and No to the second.  No person, doctor or parent or government employee has the moral right to kill people for spurious reasons of disability.  Notions of disability are totally relative.  When I was a child, I was described as severely disabled, with no hope of living beyond seven years of age…and if by chance I did, I would have the pathetic existence of a vegetable, in need of constant care and institutionalisation.  What the fuck do humans know?  How can one person evaluate the quality of life of another?  We should never be given the power to do so, if that power allows us to kill.  Period.

 

Many thanks to Nabil Shaban for answering all of Dogma’s questions.  For more information see his website at http://uk.geocities.com/jinghiz53.