To find someone you click with in any aspect of life is a special experience, but doubly so when one person is an actor and the other a director. That kind of symbiotic relationship often lends itself to a creative shorthand.
At least, that’s how actor Oli Pizzey-Stratford describes his relationship with director Isaac Elliott, with whom he has worked with now on several projects. Both are wheelchair users and passionate about creating projects that tackle taboo or non-mainstream topics.
The pair’s latest project is comedy short Don’t Come In… Yet!, which makes its Australian premiere at Flickerfest tomorrow evening, having previously screened in Dances With Films in LA. It was recently been nominated for a Casting Guild of Australia Award.
Pizzey-Stratford stars as Jake, a paraplegic who plans to have sex with his best friend June (Ella Newton). However, an overbearing dad, a rather large spider and an ageing football superstar – yes, keep your eyes peeled for a cameo by Warwick Capper – present some minor complications.
Elliott wrote and directed the short as a means to “get back on set” following the first year of COVID, after the shoot for Maverix, which he co-created and directed for ABC/Netflix, was delayed.
His and Pizzey-Stratord’s relationship goes back to ABC DisRupted short The Legend of Burnout Barry, released back in 2019.
Elliott tells IF that on that project, he had been down to the wire trying to find an actor in a wheelchair. He spotted Pizzey-Stratford – also an accomplished wheelchair tennis player – on one of Dylan Alcott’s Instagram stories.
Immediately the two hit it off and wanted to continue to work together. Pizzey-Stratford formed one of Elliott’s subjects in his Curious Australia documentary for SBS, We Are Sexual Beings (now being developed into a six-part docuseries, The Love Seat) and Elliott then directed the actor as Zane Wozniak in an episode of Neighbours in 2022.
“It was pretty obvious from the outset that Oli had something special,” Elliott says.
“As years have gone by, I’ve got to know Oli little bit more. It’s like he was saying, you get a shorthand. But I also seek to – don’t tell Oli this – challenge OIi sometimes because I think he gets quite nervous. It’s really nice to know where I can challenge him to go further, knowing that we’re coming from a place of respect and potentially similar experiences.
“I’d also add, being on lots of sets, it’s nice for a set to be wheelchair accessible and not just for me…. You then feel more part of a crew.”
Both Don’t Come In… Yet! and We Are Sexual Beings are projects that explore sexuality of people with disability in different ways. Elliott is enthused to be a part of cultural moment that also sees dramas like SBS’s Latecomers taking the topic to the mainstream.
“When it’s ‘for us, by us’ – when it is developed and created by disabled people – the nuances become as important as the big picture things. I think those nuances are what makes it real and pulls it out of soap opera or the classic Hollywood ‘overcoming a disability’ territory, and moves it into the lived experience territory. You can mine the drama within that.
“Being able to move beyond that ‘recovery as the goal’, or ‘disability as the challenge’, to the lived experience as the the challenge or the journey, is a great evolution of media in general.”
As wheelchair users, Elliott and Pizzey-Stratford have both come up against accessibility issues in the industry, both physical and attitudinal.
For instance, one Elliott’s biggest complaints is that many production companies are located up stairs, making it more difficult to arrange meetings.
“It becomes difficult to form those relationships or even just move into non-directing roles with places, unless you go remote. Obviously remote is much more common now. But 2015, 2016, it was less common and more tricky. I had been offered some remote clerical work within the industry and I was like, ‘I’m not going to learn anything from this at this point. I’m not getting on set and I’m not getting in the office with the creative people’. It forces you to have to you have to make your own stuff, basically.”
However, he does note things are slowly improving.
For instance, Elliott says his time directing an episode of Neighbours was fantastic, with the Nunawading studio lot accessible. Difficulties did arise, however, when they went on location and no one knew how to legally carry him up stairs, speaking to a larger insurance issue. It’s something he would like to see the broader industry address; noting he shouldn’t have to shoot scenes that are up stairs through Video Village and radio.
“My goal is to move into television directing in Australia as a career, which means I need to be adaptable for the sets and the sets need to equally be adaptable for me. But where they’re shooting shouldn’t limit what I’m allowed to direct.
“That’s something that hasn’t quite been navigated, which can easily put me in the ‘too hard’ basket’.”
For Pizzey-Stratford, working in front of the camera, getting a foot in the door can be difficult.
“Once I do get in, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is easy, this is great’. And you are an actor first and then a person in a wheelchair. But before that, there’s this level of intimidation and daunting that the directors, producers, casting agents have alike,” he says.
“So I think just increasing the amount of representation will eventually snowball into it being the norm.”
At the same time, he believes it is an exciting time for people with disability in the industry, noting “the cogs are starting to turn”.
“I didn’t get to see myself growing up on TV. And so if Isaac and I can respectively, in own industries, be that figurehead for people with disabilities, I think that means a lot more than any of the work that I do – to have that impact and to have kids and people alike see someone that they can relate to and go, ‘Oh, I can do that’. For me, there wasn’t that person.
“It’s a really exciting time for everyone to be a part of. Full steam ahead. From casting agents, to directors to producers, the lot, we’re here, and we’re here to stay.”
Pizzey-Stratford will next be seen on screen in SBS’s Safe Home and is in the second season of an ABC series he can’t yet name.
Elliott recently directed ABC ME series with Wildlifers!, a series that follows 14-year-old wannabe documentary filmmakers Su and Pharrell. He’s also writing another project for Pizzey-Stratford, and is developing a feature documentary.
As for Don’t Come In… Yet!, both Elliott and Pizzey-Stratford are excited to have the film screen at Flickerfest, especially in front of an Australian audience who will understand the nods to AFL.
“I think it will be good for people to get the Warwick Capper reference, because overseas we got so many people who were like ‘I think there’s a rugby player, or something like that’,” laughs Pizzey-Stratford.
Flickerfest starts tonight and runs until January 29.