I was standing in a dumpster in my Bafta awards ball gown, Lady Gaga’s perfume still clinging to my cheek, when I realised: “People really have the wrong ideas about my life.”
The reality of life with any kind of “invisible” disability, chronic illness or chronic pain is that it is by nature hidden. Working in theatre and screen, which are not known for being especially pro-disability, I’ve always taken for granted that my clutch of complicated medical woes needed to be kept, if not secret, then certainly private. Yet it was starting a new career in theatre after a life in academia (via work with disabled theatre companies such as Graeae and Unlimited) that radicalised me into disability activism, and empowered me to come out publicly as disabled. But I rarely talk about my own conditions or the impact they have on my daily life.
