Kate Hood had a career as an able-bodied actor for many years, performing in everything from classics to musicals. She worked with mainstream theatre companies (Melbourne Theatre Company, STC South Australia, Hit Productions), commercial companies (Gordon Frost Productions) and across film (Constance) and television (Prisoner).
She became a wheelchair user over a decade ago and her mainstream career ended. She reinvented herself as an actor, writer and director with disability in the disability arts sector.
She calls this her ‘in between time’, a time when she worked with a tribe of Disabled artists who were siloed away, making work which was seen almost exclusively only by other Disabled artists. This gave her a thirst to advocate for performers with disability in mainstream performing arts.
The Australia Council funded her to train as a lead creative with UK Disability arts company Unlimited and to attend the Jo Verrent Sync Leadership Intensive. She is a Sync alumni of the 2015 cohort.
She was also given a place in the Residency: Being Human and Aesthetics of Access, run by Jenny Sealey, deaf artistic director of Graeae Theatre Co (UK), also director of the Opening Ceremony for the UK Paralympic Games in 2012.
She has recently begun working in the mainstream again. Recent credits include: That’s Why the Lady Needs a Ramp (actor, writer) – Footscray Community Arts Centre, Contest – Bureau of Works, for Darebin Speakeasy (actor), The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man – Malthouse Theatre (Besen Directing Placement), Risky Business – Malthouse Theatre (Director), Neighbours – (actor) and she is an artist in residence at Footscray Community Arts Centre.
Kate is Deputy Chair of Actors Equity’s Diversity Committee, founder and Co-Chair of the Performers with Disability Committee, and sits on the board of Arts Access Victoria.
Her theatre company Raspberry Ripple Productions, was formed to address a major gap in the mainstream. Its remit is to make original, inclusive theatre which articulates stories of disabled and able-bodied people living in the world together. Its first production, Enunciations 1, was supported by Footscray Arts Centre under its Call To Create program, and it has gone on to develop new shows That Old Thing, The Prince’s Mum, Enunciations ll, That’s Why the Lady Needs a Ramp, Have Ramp Will Travel, workshops in Inclusive Practice, and a new initiative, Raspberry Ripple Reads, which sees disabled actors adding dimension to rehearsed readings of established plays. Raspberry Ripple is a company in residence at FCAC.
Kate passionately believes that the best way to advocate for disabled artists is to make work which depends on them for its impact.