Hear Me Out
Sofya Gollan is a Deaf actor, screenwriter and director and Play School presenter.
Words by Mia Timpano
Frankie Magazine Issue 84 2018
Change is inevitable – it might just happen in the most improbable place. Like on a TV kid’s show, for example. In 1991 Play School became the first Australian television program to present a Deaf person in a positive light. That person was Sofya Gollan, born deaf as a result of the rubella epidemic of the early 70’s – a common cause of deafness of her generation. “Up until then, it was very… ‘Look at those poor Deaf people’, whereas on Play School it was just presented as, ‘This is a Deaf person doing stuff like other presenters,” Sofya recalls. “It would have been the first time many deaf kids had seen a person using sign language on national TV. “And that’s so important,” she says, “because you start feeling included in the greater society.”
Although very proud to have been part of the ground-breaking show (and the recipient of many “cute” fan letters and drawings), Sofya wasn’t always proud to be Deaf. “I had a much more complicated relationship with it,” she says laughing. “With disability it’s hard to not be affected by how people view you, no matter how strong you might be inside. When you’re surrounded by people going “you can’t do that”, or “Oh my god, you can acheive the most basic, simple thing,’ your identity gets coloured by low expectations” So what do you do? “You learn to be bulletproof”, Sofya says.
And in a way, she literally has been. She left school at 17 to work full time as an actor at the Australian Theatre of the Deaf, where she first immersed herself in learning Auslan (“My family was hearing so they never saw the need to pick it up” she explains) Sofya moved to the States, she had a gun pulled on her; she saw drug deals on the streets of Atlanta – all while touring with America’s Deaf theatre (National Theatre of the Deaf). “We were shadowed by voice actors, so audiences could understand what we were signing on stage,” Sofya recalls. Using sign gave all kinds of opportunities for visual puns. “And people got it, even if they didn’t know sign language – you can push it to mime, where you’re talking about love, for example, you might draw a heart in the air, and you might show your heart is thumping, fast or slow. Or you might show an arrow going through it, it’s quite pictorial.”
Sofya continued to forge a successful career in acting back home in Sydney, but it wasn’t quite the career she had hoped for. “I was reading roles of the poor deaf victim: the person who has to overcome many obstacles to just get a cup of tea,” she says. “I’m over-simplifying it, but I wasn’t seeing roles for Deaf people… doing stuff and having the same aspirations as anyone else: to get married, to fall in love, to be a firefighter, whatever…”
Sick of the victim stance that writers were perpetuating, Sofya set about creating some new on-screen roles for Deaf people. First step; get a degree at AFTRS – The Australian, Film, Television and Radio School. Check. Next step; get hired as a director. Not so simple. “I was launched into an industry at a time when ‘disability’ was a dirty word, she says. “There was no such thing as ‘inclusive’. So, if I was working, it was because I was generating my own projects, and that takes time and resources. After a while I found it exhausting.” Meanwhile Sofya watched her able-bodied contemporaries – i.e. people who didn’t need interpreters landing gig after gig. It was challenging seeing my peers shoot ahead and earn a living in the industry while I was shut out,” she admits.
The industry is changing, however – and in a major way. Today, Sofya works at Create NSW in the investment team assessing which projects will receive support. “It came about because of Courtney Gibson, who was then CEO of Screen NSW,” Sofya explains, “she took a look around her office and realised she had no diversity on the floor. She headhunted me and said, “You’ve got film experience, apply for a part-time job here?” Since then, Sofya has become a full time senior-level executive managing Screenability – a program creating opportunities for Disabled folk in industry, alongside a curated program for Sydney Film Festival, along with her general slate of projects. “It’s great because it means producers have to deal with me the same way they have to deal with anybody in the agency, it opens their perception to people with disability in decision-making roles and normalises it in a way that really needs to happen.”
Over time, Sofya has changed perceptions around sign language, making it more accessible through her work on Play School (she still does the occasional show) and SignBaby, her Auslan DVD for parents of Deaf bubs. Chuck it on, settle on the couch, and Sofya will teach you over 200 signs, plus a few nursery rhymes.
Funnily enough Sofya doesn’t sign much at home. She received a cochlear implant 12 years ago which allows her to recognise speech, so her two sons have been slow to learn sign. “I’ve tried to teach them,” she says, “and I’m still trying”. It’s common for children of Deaf adults – or Coda’s as they’re known in the community – to not learn sign language if their parent is able to speak. It becomes extra hard to convince them to learn if their other parent doesn’t pick it up.
A full work life means there hasn’t been a lot of time for Sofya to take on personal creative projects in recent years – although there have been a few, including Gimpsey, a crowd-funded short film about a teenage girl struggling with personal insecurity and a toxic best friend. The role is played by Bridie McKim, an actress with mild cerebral palsy. “I wanted to present a character who was beautiful and desirable despite of or because of her disability, and could be just as duplicitous as anybody,” she says. “It’s my view that artists with disability offer a unique perspective on the world. And when they’re in charge of the narrative, they present a viewpoint that’s different to the ableist one most people have. So, rather than coming from the position of “I have disability; I need to be included; please let me in,” I come from the position; ‘I have a disability; this is what I’ve experienced; and this is the world as I see it. Isn’t it different? Isn’t it great?”.
