THE star of a cult television show will arrive in the region to perform in a major arts festival.
As part of its New Reality Festival, Cleveland Arts will present a new work by Mat Fraser, who starred in the Channel Four programme Freakout.
In it, the drummer, rapper, poet, television and film actor develops his last highly-successful show into a mixed media performance, viewing circus freaks from a variety of angles.
A performer all his life, with short arms due to his mother taking the drug thalidomide while pregnant, Mat was a drummer in rock bands for 15 years before becoming an actor and writer.
It was during his training with the British disabled theatre company, GRAEAE, that he first became fascinated by disabled performers' heritage and the reaction of able-bodied audiences to them.
In this one-act, one-man show, entitled Seal Boy: Freak, Mat poses the question; "Can a disabled performer be seen as anything but a freak, irrespective of the attitudes of today's sophisticated audiences?"
l Mat Fraser's Seal Boy: Freak can be seen at the Cornerhouse, in Middlesbrough, on Wednesday, October 4, at 8pm.
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