March 2024
Award winning artistic director Jenny Sealey is bringing her acclaimed solo show Self-Raising to the Bramall Rock Void at Leeds Playhouse this week (22-23 March). She has spent a lifetime championing stories by deaf and disabled artists and has been artistic director of Graeae Theatre Company, which puts access at the heart of its work, since 1997. Sealey pioneered a new theatrical language developing the ‘Aesthetics of Access’ as an artistic expression, incorporating creatively integrated sign language, captioning and audio description in performance.
After years successfully enabling artists to tell stories, she’s now taking to the road on a national tour to tell her own story. Unravelling the past and facing the future, Self-Raising is billed as a blisteringly honest, laugh-out-loud one-woman show about growing up deaf in a family with secrets. Here, Jo Haywood chats to Sealey about the show, her route into the arts, and career highlights so far…
What prompted you to tell the story of your childhood now?
“It was never my intention to tell my story. I was doing an adaptation of Flour Babies by Anne Fine. It was the default of a lovely evening meal with some much younger artists and my interpreter. The chat and wine flowed and I told them a little bit about my life and family stuff and they asked, ‘Are you going to be in your show, Jen. You are a Flour Baby’. I said ‘no’ but then everyone else said ‘yes’. It all snowballed from there. It has been quite extraordinary.”
What did you find most challenging about facing your past?
“I still feel so angry that the doctors would not let me be deaf. I started to grieve for the millions of conversations I have missed being deaf, for the horrendous gaps in my education and that being deaf led to some other events which shouldn’t have happened.”
Did you consult with other members of your family about the show? And have they seen it?
“My immediate family have read the script and have given me permission to do it and to use photos. They have not seen it yet. I will be so nervous when they do. My 92 year old great aunt saw it with her daughters. She knew the secret. Of course she did. Her daughters were cross that she had never told them. They told me some more family stuff about my great-great grandad and some of their own family secrets. It was an illuminating conversation!”
You’re best known as a director. What was it like to switch over to performing?
“It was a much easier switch than I imagined having not really acted since I was at Half Moon Young People’s Theatre and Red Ladder in 1990. Although I did have to take over David Toole in Graeae’s production of The Fall of The House of Usher for a week and I was in a script in hand show And Others at the National Theatre and Where’s My Vagina at WOW. This is billed as a one woman show but I am not on stage in my own as I have a sign language interpreter with me. Four of my treasured interpreters share the tour and we do interact with each other and share the space, but it is me who has to remember all the words! I have loved taking on the aesthetics of access as an actor and I now understand the responsibility my casts feel owning the audio description and accuracy of lines because everything is captioned.”
What do you hope audience will get from the show?
“I want audiences to be curious about their families and to think about their own narrative. All of us have a play within us.”
How did you come to be working in the arts?
“I wanted to be a dancer and majored in dance and choreography during my BA in Performing Arts at Middlesex Polytechnic. A friend who was majoring in acting on the same course directed me in Dario Fo’s Woman Alone and I fell in love with acting. I then went on to work for Graeae in A Private View which is where I found my tribe, a place where I could be me, a place to belong. Then I worked in TIE (Theatre In Education) with Theatre Centre, Red Ladder, and Half Moon Young People’s Company. Taking plays into schools and youth clubs was truly wonderful and, to this day, I am upset that the TIE movement has ebbed away. For some many children, it was the first time they had ever seen any theatre. Drama in schools is a human right. I hate that our government is taking this right from children and young people.”
What have been the highlights of your career so far?
“Being artistic director of Graeae is a mega highlight. I have worked with brilliant people and have a glorious team around me. I have loved all our plays but doing Reasons to Be Cheerful, our first ever musical, was special. And, of course, co-directing the London 2012 Paralympic Opening Ceremony was truly amazing.”
Self-Raising is at Leeds Playhouse from the 22nd to 23rd March 2024 – more information and tickets can be found here.
Q&A courtesy of Jo Haywood.
Always Time For Theatre 
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