The practice of employing actors without disabilities to play the parts of people with mental impairments is “the modern equivalent of blacking-up”, says Nicola Clark, the mother of the first actress with Asperger’s syndrome to play a character with the condition. Nicola’s daughter, Lizzy, appeared in the BBC production of Dustbin Baby in 2008 as Poppy, a teenager with Asperger’s.
Nicola Clark argues that it is not just disabled actors who are victims of this “blacking-up”; the public also lose out, because they think they are getting an authentic representation of a person with mental impairment when they are not.
