ENTWINED

Mat is a disabled actor/musician/writer who also does Live Art, TV presenting, Cabaret, and even some modelling… he is multi-disciplinary, though it was never intended. He is both a disabled artist, and a disability artist, in that, he simultaneously seeks a mainstream acting career as any non-disabled actor might do, but all his self-produced work deals with the social construct that is disability in one way or another; His poetry/rap C.D.’s are direct takes on disability, attempting to simultaneously connect with disabled listeners (and their friends, etc), and wake up non thinkers to the social apartheid he experiences daily. His play, ‘Sealboy:Freak’, is a discussion of perceptions of disabled performers through history, as is his documentary ‘Born Freak’ (Channel 4, 2002). His screenplays all have a disabled character(s) central to the story, though not necessarily a ‘disability’ story. Mat does as much mainstream work as possible to include himself as a disabled person in a world where the tele-visual image is GOD and therefore creates our reality, because he thinks it’s vital that disabled people are seen as part of that ‘included-in-Society’ reality, and not as a separate entity. That’s why he was prepared to compromise some of his own politics to be involved in ‘ Freak Out'( Channel 4,2000), which is an irreverent light entertainment program taking Disability to the ‘lads’ TV market, and an intentional antidote to the previous image of disabled people on TV as politically homogeneous, socially aware, issue-obsessed separatists. Mat plans to continue his work as a mainstream actor and to always have an agenda of disability inclusion in his own works. It’s an exciting time for this disabled arts practitioner. Mat has short arms as a result of Thalidomide.