Jamie's game

As a child, Jamie Beddard imagined running his team and tactics from the touchline of a soccer pitch. Now, as Cathy Reay discovers, since his big break, he’s deploying his own talents as actor, writer and director in a whole other theatre of dreams

In his dressing room cubbyhole in the damp backstage halls of an otherwise rather lavish West End theatre, Jamie Beddard is preparing for a matinee performance of Nina Bawden’s classic story Carrie’s War, in which he stars. We tell him he’s really hit the big time, but this, he reveals, wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. “My ambition as a kid was to be a football manager,” he confesses. “But the world isn’t ready for a disabled person to do that. So here I am.”

Though he may not have longed to be an actor as a child there’s nothing wistful or regretful about Jamie’s story; right now he is having the time of his life. “As a young disabled person you are encouraged to ‘grow’ certain ways and acting just wasn’t on my radar,” he explains.

“I was a youth worker, not doing very well; I didn’t know where I wanted to go. Then this whole new world opened to me and I thought ‘this is really good! I like it and I want to do more!’”

Jamie’s big chance came when he was cast to play Arthur, a boy with cerebral palsy abandoned in a hospital and subject to serious discrimination and cruelty, in the 1994 BBC2 adaptation of William Horwood’s novel Skallagrigg.

“I never considered acting before Skallagrigg,” he admits. “When I met the casting directors I simply told them I’d be very good and they believed me and gave me the job. I was completely bullshitting them!”

His performance opened a world of opportunity for Jamie, giving the young actor the chance to direct and write for the stage as well as star on-screen. In working behind the scenes he believes he found his calling, or as close to the childhood dream as he could get: “As a football manager you need to organise a team of people to get what you want and when you do get that team working together it is brilliant. I think that draws a lot of parallels with directing or writing a play for theatre.”

Jamie has also acted in and written plays with Graeae, the disabled theatre company. “There’s nothing better than watching your own play being performed, that is really magical,” he gushes. “Of course, so long as the actors don’t bugger it up!”

He says the key, though, is not being too precious about your work. “Theatre is collaborative, that’s why I love it,” he explains. “Once you’ve got a really good team of actors it’s so great to be able to bounce ideas off each other, to learn through experience.”

Jamie is currently writing an educational play called Beat Them, Join Them, which will tour around schools later in the year. The story focuses on a group of disabled teenagers and how they find their identity as they move into adulthood. “I still haven’t finished writing it, it was meant to be finished three months ago!” he confesses. “I love writing, I want to do more of it, but I’m a bit lazy.”

Something Jamie doesn’t have to deal with when he’s behind-the-scenes is the way he is critiqued by the media as an actor. As bringing in disabled people for major roles is still a relatively new thing, he gets frustrated that journalists only ever refer to his disability, and are careful not to insult his ability to perform. “The reviews for Skallagrigg weren’t about me being a good actor or a bad actor, they were about me being a disabled actor. It can be really soul-destroying when that’s the only thing people comment on,” he says.

“My ambition is to have a bad review because that means that the journalist is looking at me in terms of my acting ability, not my disability. I’ve never had a bad review and yet I’ve been terrible sometimes!”

He is encouraged by the fact that the situation is progressing for disabled people that want media roles in the public eye, albeit very slowly. “Many years ago I had a meeting with EastEnders people and one of the producers said we don’t want to make it a ‘freak show’,” he reveals. “That was ten years ago and you just think, oh my god, this is what we’re up against. It’s ridiculous.”

There’s no end to Jamie’s ambition, as shown from his impressive and varied CV; in addition to writing a play and starring in a West End production he also works part-time for the Arts Council, helping to get disabled people into the arts. He’s so keen to make the change happen faster – to fight to get disabled people the right kind of limelight they want and deserve: “Good art is about good stories, new perspectives and good ideas and in a way disabled people are in this wonderful position to provide that,” he says.

He doesn’t have a particular goal in mind, he tells us he is not that driven though that is very hard to believe, but he’d like to see his own production put on at the West End.

“I am career-motivated but at the end of the day, having a career is about providing for my family,” he says.

Jamie wants to play King Lear at some point; he is anxious to play more non-disabled characters as he says his best job so far was in Waiting For Godot, in a role that didn’t require a disability. “We didn’t tell anyone I was disabled, so people came along and then I came on stage and you could tell there was a bit of a blind spot,” he explains. “After ten minutes though they’re on your journey, it becomes about your character and not like ‘oh my god there’s a disabled man on stage’.

“I’d like to continue to be a successful playwright and actor, I’d like to play more characters that don’t have a disability as their defining quality. But you know what, if the money’s good, I’ll do anything.”