21. Disability and... Graeae: Nabil Shaban & Nickie Miles-Wildin

Show Notes

This month to celebrate Graeae turning 40, Associate Director Nickie Miles-Wildin chats to co-founder of Graeae Theatre Nabil Shaban about his ambition of being an actor and a writer and what led him to set up Graeae. This podcast contains some strong language. 

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Hello and welcome to the Graeae and Disability Arts Online Podcast, Disability And... Bringing together thoughtful discussion and debate. This month, Nickie Miles-Wildin, Graeae's associate director chats with actor, writer and co-founder of Graeae Theatre Company, Nabil Shaban about Graeae turning 40 and what, if anything, has changed since then. This podcast contains some strong language.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Hello and welcome to the Graeae and Disability Arts Online Podcast. I'm Nickie Miles-Wildin. I am associate director at Graeae Theatre Company. I am a white woman. Bleached white hair, though I'm saying that but you can start to see my dark roots now, due to lockdown number, whatever number we're on. It's long on the top, short on the sides. I've got black rimmed glasses, piercing in my left nostril. I'm wearing a black headset, makes me look a bit and feel a bit like Britney Spears. I'm wearing a grey jumper, which has got snowflakes on and behind me is a white bookcase full of loads of books about theatre that I haven't read. I am delighted to be joined today by the legend, and I said to him I hold him up there, high as somebody that I've really looked up to and aspired to during my career. He's co-founder of Graeae Theatre Company. It's the wonderful Nabil Shaban. Hello, Nabil.
Nabil Shaban:
Hello, wonderful Nickie.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
How are you?
Nabil Shaban:
All right. Right, so now I need to describe me?
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Well, first of all, I've got glasses on. Secondly, my hair is rapidly disappearing and rapidly going grey to white, so it's pretty thin on top. I'm wearing a black top with a red waistcoat. Red and black are my two favourite colours, so I'm more likely to be wearing that. Behind me, like you, I've got a bookcase. In fact, I've got bookcases, they're kind of at angle to each other and they're full of books, and too many of them I haven't read yet and I've had some of them for 30 years. They're still screaming at me, "Read me! Read me! Read me!". Sometimes, well, I like to imagine that they push themselves out to get my attention and I'm sure of it if I was in Harry Potter-land, would be attacked every time I come into this room by all the books demanding to be read.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
So you're co-founder of Graeae Theatre Company? And we were chatting, weren't we, before I pressed record about, because I'm just a little bit older than Graeae, Graeae turns 40 this year, of how, back in late '70s, you and Richard Tomlinson were kind of cooking up this idea of Graeae.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
What led you to setting it up?
Nabil Shaban:
Well, basically, it was the fact that I was a student at Hereward College, back in the early to mid '70s and I was mad about theatre then. I wanted to be an actor at that time. I would say I wanted to be an actor since I was a kid at school and maybe even before that, when I was a patient in a children's hospital in Surrey. I always maintained an interest in being an actor, although always from the point of view of school plays, college plays, amateur and so on.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
And of course, I knew, because we never saw anybody in a wheelchair on television or in the movies unless they were non-disabled actor, star, pretending to be a crip, so I already suspected that if you're in a wheelchair, you can forget it. I knew that my school certainly would laugh at me if I'd told them that my ambition was to be an actor.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Did you star in any school plays whilst you were there?
Nabil Shaban:
I don't know about starring, but I was often instrumental in getting a teacher to put on a play. It was a special school for disabled kids and it wasn't something that they would do automatically. The one thing they did do automatically was the Nativity play.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Okay.
Nabil Shaban:
When I first arrived at that school, I was nine and it was the autumn, and when the Nativity play was being set up for that year, I immediately asked to be in it, at the age of nine. They'd already told me that everything had been cast, so I couldn't play Joseph or any of the kings and I couldn't even play the baby Jesus in the crib.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Not even the inn-keeper either?
Nabil Shaban:
Not even the inn-keeper. I couldn't be a cow, I couldn't be a sheep or anything, or certainly not any of the angels. But they saw how upset and disappointed I was and they said, "Well, what would you like to play? Perhaps we can create someone for you." So I said, "I'll be an astronaut."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
And did they allow it?
Nabil Shaban:
And they looked at me rather astonished and then I said, "Well, why wouldn't an astronaut go to visit baby Jesus?" And they thought, "Well, all right." I got to make my astronaut suit, which was a cardboard box for the helmet and I cut something out and so on. That was it. that was my first acting role ever.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Brilliant.
Nabil Shaban:
An astronaut in the Nativity play.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Brilliant, and the fact that you threw a bit of a diva strop there, demanding a role in the play, I think that was it. Could see your career in front of you.
Nabil Shaban:
Well, I'm not sure I did see my career in front of me, but I was certainly encouraged by that.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Good.

Nabil Shaban:
And the other thing is that, of course, it was a Christian Methodist setup and there was often Sunday school, well every Sunday afternoon we had Sunday school, and as I got older, the teenage kids would take in turns to run the Sunday school on that day. When it came to my turn, I wasn't that keen on doing a conventional Sunday school session. Me, having kind of a theatrical bent, I decided that we should do a dramatic reconstruction of one of the stories in the Bible.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
I cast the kids, I was probably in it as well. I wrote it, cast it, directed it, and then we performed it on that particular Sunday. Then, there was one other time that I did it and that was, strangely enough, when there was a kind of pandemic in the children's home. It was the summer and there was a bug and the bug had ripped through probably a third or half of the people in the home.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Wow.
Nabil Shaban:
I was one of those kids that got it, of course, but it so happened that the headmaster also got it and so there was a third or a half of the school, children and staff, all in the "hospital" wing. It so happened that that time it was the Sunday that I was supposed to take the session and I said to Mr. Hues who was the boss, I said, "What am I going to do? he said, "Well, why don't you create something which involves everybody?"
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Wow.
Nabil Shaban:
So I searched the Bible in the Old Testament, because the best stories are in the Old Testament, and I found a story that climaxed with a battle.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Right, exciting.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah, exactly. I thought I'd be Cecil B. DeMille and create an epic film. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was nice grounds around "the hospital" for what I wanted to produce, so I wrote a little script, allocated the parts of course, and then told people, "Right, you'll die at the end." And blah blah blah. Of course, the rest of the staff who were in the big house who were unaffected were watching this kind of strange activity going on, down there at "the hospital" and then, the next thing they saw was that half of the people dropped down dead, including Mr. Hues. They were obviously thinking, "Oh my god. It's the bug."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
"It's contagious." Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
"Killed them off." Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah. That's one of my favourite memories of... A, Mr. Hues being so game to go along with what I wanted to do and play the part, and secondly, we scared the shit out of the staff that hadn't got the virus and thinking that we had all died.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
All just gone. Fantastic. Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
That's the kind of audience response you want, isn't it?
Nabil Shaban:
It is, absolutely.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Taking forth these skills then, so you knew that you'd gotten into drama and you'd gotten into writing, directing when you were at Hereward College and you met Richard. Tell us about how, I suppose, that partnership happened.
Nabil Shaban:
Okay, well, just before that because unfortunately I didn't go to Hereward from the school. At that time, Hereward hadn't been created and all that was available to me was a sheltered workshop.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Okay.
Nabil Shaban:
So I hated it.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
And I call it, to this day, "the dump".
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Okay.
Nabil Shaban:
Because I considered it a dumping ground. So I left Penhurst, the children's home, not having anywhere to go and the thing was I had to go somewhere that was a minimum of three years because there's a funny thing with local authorities, when you cease being a kid, before they could be responsible for you, you had to be in their catchment area for three years. Anything less than that, no one would have to take responsibility for you.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
And because of that, the school thought, "Well, what can we do with Nabil? He's fairly bright, but he hasn't got much of a future, really. I think probably the best thing would be to stick him in some kind of workshop, a residential workshop and he could stay there for the rest of his life." Now, I didn't want to do that and I kept saying, "No." And I said, "Look, I want to do O-levels and A-levels and I want to do art." Because that was the other thing that I seemed pretty good at, was art work. Painting and drawing. And of course, there was no way I could talk about being an actor. That was totally out of bounds.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah, off the scale.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah and I didn't dare say that to anyone, except one man, one guy. He was working in the home as a carer in my final year in the home. A young bloke, Scottish Glaswegian fellow. He was probably, actually, I was 16 and he would have been maybe 18.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Okay, so not that much older?
Nabil Shaban:
Exactly, so we were best mates, really, except for he was an authority and I was his junior. He saw how miserable I was about going to "the dump" and he said, "So, what else would you rather do, then? What do you want to do? What are your ambitions?" I said, "Well, I want to be a writer. I want to be an artist. I want to do painting and drawing and so on." And he says, "Yeah, well, you could do all that. Nothing to stop you being a writer and that." And I said, "Yeah, but I haven't got the skills for that and anyway, what can I write about? Apart from making up stories, which other people can do as well as me?" And then he said, "So what else do you want to do?" And I said, "Well, don't laugh at me, but I want to be an actor." And he didn't laugh and he says, "Why can't you be an actor?"
Nabil Shaban:
I said, "Don't be silly. How can I be an actor?" He said, "Why not?" I said, "I'm in a wheelchair. You can't be an actor if you're in a wheelchair. When was the last time you saw somebody in a wheelchair that was a real disabled person?" And he said, "Well, there's Michael Flanders." I said, "Yes, there is Michael Flanders, but he's more of a singer. He's a sort of comic..."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
"... Vaudeville kind of performer and that's not what I want to do." I know I did try to sing once. But he used to write funny songs, Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud, and I Don't Eat People, which is the cannibal song. And I hadn't a clue how he made it to be a performer. So anyway, he suggested that I write to Flanders.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
See what advice he had, so I did do that. And I said, "Anyway, I've got to go to drama school to be an actor." And I said, "No drama school would accept me as a student." He says, "How do you know?" I said, "They wouldn't." He says, "Why not?" I said, "Because they wouldn't want a person in a wheelchair as a student." He says, "How do you know? Have you asked them?" I said, "No." He says, "Well, why don't you write to them?"
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
I said, "All right. I will." So I wrote about 15, 16 letters. I'd gotten a list of all the major drama schools in the country with their addresses and I wrote to every one of them. Unsurprisingly, everyone wrote back and basically said, "Forget it."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
At least they wrote back. At least they wrote back.
Nabil Shaban:
Well, today they wouldn't have.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
No.
Nabil Shaban:
In those days people used to reply to letters.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
What response did you get off Michael Flanders then? Did you get a letter back?
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah. Yeah, he wrote back and he said, first of all, that he became a performer before he was stricken with, I think it was Polio.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Okay.
Nabil Shaban:
And because he already had a track record as a performer, actually he was able to get back into it, albeit in a much reduced capacity. But because he was always a comedian, a singer, wrote songs, comical songs and he was able to create, him and his non-disabled friend, Donald Swann, they were able to create a demand and that was one of the key things that he said to me. He says, "If you want to get into showbiz, you've got to create a demand for what you have to offer. So basically, you need to do something that's unique."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah. The USP, unique selling point.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah and one of the things that he said, "You won't be able to get into drama school. You can forget that, the way things are. Secondly, you're not going to be able to do Shakespeare, etc., etc. because everyone is very conventional and they're unlikely to rethink any of the mainstream plays and have characters that don't look like the way they've always looked. So they're not going to let you play Hamlet in a wheelchair and anyway, to play Hamlet, you've got to have first gone to drama school and you can't get into drama school because they won't have you because you're disabled. So what you have to do is write your own stuff."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
"Write things which only you can do, so create stories that are unique to your experience." Now, I'm a 16 year old, 17 year old and I'm thinking, "But I haven't had any experience."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
"I know nothing. How can I write anything that could be different to anything else, to whatever is going on at the moment?" I was still writing, but I was writing adaptations of stuff.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
I kept sending them to him and he kept saying, "Look, they're okay, but anyone can do that. Anyone can write a radio adaptation of this story or that story. Why would they want yours? There's nothing unique in what you're doing." And he says, "And stop writing these stupid biblical stories."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Etc., etc. and he kept hammering on me, "Write about your life. That's what people are interested in. They're interested in your particular perception of the world."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah. Your narrative. Yeah. How did that then develop into meeting Richard?
Nabil Shaban:
Right. The great thing about it was that after having gotten out of the Derwen three years later, Hereward was now established and a year after leaving the Derwen, I was able to apply and I had an interview with a panel and Richard. Because Richard was a lecturer at Hereward, and he lectured in history and English and the course that I was applying for actually didn't involve Richard at all, because I was doing a business studies diploma.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
But he was nonetheless on the interview panel because his main concern, apart from lecturing in his particular subjects, was extracurricular activities and it turned out that he had a little drama group that those students that were interested could go to in the evening. So when I went to the interview panel and there was maybe five members of staff, probably including the principal or vice principal, Richard, he said, "Now, I see from your application form that you like theatre, that you like acting and so on?" And I said, "Yeah, I do." And he says, "So what have you done as an actor?" I said, "Well, only school plays." I then told him about what I've done at the Derwen, at "the dump" and so on. He says, "Oh, okay." And he says, "Well I've got a little group and if you were to be offered a place here, would you at all be interested in joining my group in the evenings?" I said, "Of course I would. Try and stop me."
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
And he laughed at that and then, so there we are. Had the interview and then, a few weeks later or whatever I got an offer to go there.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
I went to Hereward and I was there for two years. So when I arrived, I badgered, it was more likely me badgering Richard than him badgering me, so I probably knocked on his office. He and his wife and daughter were live-ins.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Okay, yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
So he couldn't escape us. In the evening I'd probably knocked on his door, and I said, "Hey, what about this drama group you've got?" I was there to get involved in the next show, from the outset, and that was called Ready Salted Crips.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
And we, at Hereward, I don't know if we invented that term, but it was brand new. It was hot off the press and we were calling ourselves crips. I suggested, when Richard wanted to do another sketch show and wondered what we should call it because he didn't like Never Mind You'll Soon Get Better or call it Never Mind You'll Soon Get Better Two. I said, "Well, why don't we call it Ready Salted Crips?" And he went for it. That show proved to be very popular at Hereward and we took it on tour around the county of Warwickshire. So quite a varied set of venues. Schools, old folks' homes, colleges, etc., etc. Even a proper theatre, which lent itself to the local Am-Drams and so on.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
And Richard and I were actually amazed at how people loved it.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Brilliant.
Nabil Shaban:
Most of the audiences were non-disabled and we realised that there was actually a thirst for something like what we were doing. People wanted to see disabled people in an affirmative position, in a positive, constructive situation. They were curious about our lives. They were curious about how we perceive their world and often they were shocked by our sarcasm, our cynicism, our anger and so on. But at the same time, there was a kind of masochistic attitude amongst a lot of the non-disabled audiences. This really excited me and Richard and by the time... I was only at Hereward for two years. My course was coming to an end and Richard actually was leaving Hereward and he was going off to the States. Before we parted ways, Richard said to me, "How do you fancy the idea of setting up a theatre company of disabled people?" I said, "Well, yeah. Sounds like a good idea, but I don't know we're going to do it." I was very pessimistic, actually and I think it was all because in the past I'd suffered so many disappointments.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
And so many rejections. There were rejections which I haven't even gone into because I was always trying be an actor.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
So then, Richard's proposal of setting up this theatre company for disabled people and it's really quite interesting hearing this journey, this story, because you think this is over 40 years ago, isn't it? 45 years ago, really your journey and working in the industry and also meeting the young people that I meet, it's still so similar. That feeling of if you're a disabled person, you can't possibly be an actor. Why would you want to do that?
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
And it's that, that you actually go from you and Richard having this idea to set it up and even your hesitancy then. I see that so replicated, even in this next generation coming through.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
That fear of "What is my place in the industry?"
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah. That's because the industry hasn't changed much, has it?
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
No. I don’t…
Nabil Shaban:
And they make a couple of steps forward, and then they go back again.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Every now and then we hear bloody stories that yet another Hollywood star who's not disabled is getting a plum part in some movie about a disabled character.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
Graeae still is in the business of training disabled people as actors.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Still in the business of training disabled people as writers.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
And directors and so on. Because when Richard and I set up Graeae in 1980, I naively, optimistically thought that after 10 years Graeae would cease to exist. That there wouldn't be a need for Graeae because, hopefully by that time, disabled people would be able to get into drama school and be able to get into other theatre professions, able to be in the RSC or the National Theatre and it'd all be taken for granted. But that didn't happen.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
But it's quite interesting, isn't it? When you look at the progression of theatre and also of the disability journey, how it's so impacted by the government. Always that progression that you feel you make and then, there's a change in government, and then you're pushed back again, aren't you?
Nabil Shaban:
Oh, absolutely. I mean you look at what Tony Blair did in terms of fullering the austerity programme. The first people he was cutting was disability arts.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
So many disabled led organisations had their money taken off them and he did it in such a sneaky way, as well. For example, he got the London Disability Arts Forum to host a debate about the fact that maybe now we don't need money going into disabled arts organisations because that money could go into putting disabled people in the mainstream theatre and other things, and all that.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
But that wasn't going to happen. I was actually annoyed with LDAF for agreeing to have a seminar to basically debate our extinction.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
To gives the government. If they could get some disabled people to actually agree with the motion that we actually don't need specialist funding anymore because the government is going to put that money into promoting disabled people in the National Theatre and the Royal Courts and all that shit, which they weren't going to do anyways. But that was Blair, Old Tory New Labour government were looking to stop the funding.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
And at the same time that was happening, to make sure that disabled people would not have a voice, an objection to what Blair is doing, for some strange reason all the TV companies decided to knock on the head the disabled type programmes. One in four disappeared.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
The...
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
…. The Edge? Yeah. Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
Yeah. All those subtly, Link on ITV, they all disappeared and I was convinced I knew the reason why all this disabled led, produced, disability programmes on mainstream television, albeit they're always late at night or early on a Sunday morning...
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Sunday morning, yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
There was no one, no audience apart from disabled dedicated to watch it. I was convinced that, actually, they were destroyed deliberately by Blair's government because they wanted to stifle our voices, because they knew we will be using those programmes, those platforms, to protest about the austerity programmes, the persecution of disabled people, the removal of arts funding, etc., etc. But that's the problem, is that eventually if the government wants to kill us, they'll find a way of doing it.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah. Sadly.
Nabil Shaban:
And that's the reason I wrote First To Go, as a warning of what I saw was going to be our future if we didn't remain vigilant.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Thinking about the future then, what advice would you give to a young disabled artist starting their career now?
Nabil Shaban:
I would actually give the same advice that I got from Michael Flanders, really. Write your stuff. Create a demand for yourself because the chances are drama schools are still not taking on disabled people on the basis of their talent. The theatre profession, the TV profession, the whole entertainments industry, and that's the problem. We call it an entertainments industry, which immediately turns it into a capitalist motion, a setup. It's all about commerce.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah, money.
Nabil Shaban:
And the problem is that Thatcherism and then Blairism in Britain turned their back on arts, for art's sake.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
Right. There was a time when the BFI, the British Film Institute, before Tony Blair fucked it up, was into making movies that were different.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
That were experimental, that were artistic, that allowed people like Derek Jarman to make films and Mike Leigh, and loads of other people who felt that it is okay.. and Ken Loach, okay to sort of make some issue based movies or movies that were not necessarily straightforwardly narrative and so on.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
So, really, it is that advice to those aspiring artists was to write your own material, yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
And not only write your own material, but get your mates together and perform it.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Okay.
Nabil Shaban:
Because it's the only way we're going to do it. The thing is we have to keep reinventing the wheelchair because if we relax in any way, it will be taken from us again.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nabil Shaban:
We can't afford to be complacent, so we have to keep creating the Liz Carrs and the Lisa Hammonds and the Nickie Wildin, and the Matt...
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Matt Frasers.
Nabil Shaban:
... Matt Frasers and so on. Because if we don't keep creating them, then the cause will die again.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah. We've got to keep the movement going.
Nabil Shaban:
Keep the movement going and you've got to keep being angry, as well.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah. So…Go on.
Nabil Shaban:
So write stuff and don't ever compromise to it.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
And don't give up.
Nabil Shaban:
Don't give up. In a way, the great thing about YouTube and the way the technologies have made the things more accessible and cheap, you can make a movie with a smart phone and you've got a good editing facility and so on, and although yeah, the audiences on YouTube... I mean I've got a YouTube channel with about 200 videos on, but I don't get many people looking at it.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
You will now, after the podcast.
Nabil Shaban:
Maybe, but the thing is YouTube now is oversubscribed. There's millions of videos on there. It's hard to choose, but nonetheless, it's still possible for independent disabled actors and filmmakers and writers to put their material together and make something and get it out there. That didn't exist 10, 20 years ago.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
No.
Nabil Shaban:
So we just have to take over whatever media platforms there are and just push our material out.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Yeah. Keep our voices being heard. So I suppose then, do you honestly think, I'm intrigued by this, you honestly think in 40 years' time we will be at a place where we won't need Graeae?
Nabil Shaban:
I'd be surprised if we were in such a place.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Nabil Shaban:
Sadly.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
But is that what you...
Nabil Shaban:
I hope you will prove me wrong.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
Nabil, it's been an absolute joy talking to you this afternoon. It's really engaged me in our history, even more so than what I was before and I just wish there was a feeling like the movement has moved on. But as you keep saying, we just have to keep pushing it and making sure our stories are out there.
Nabil Shaban:
Thank you.
Nickie Miles-Wildin:
No, thank you. Thank you, Nabil.
Speaker 1:
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