British actor Mat Fraser is host for the BBC “Ouch!” disability Web site’s monthly podcast. He’s also a rock musician, poet, performance artist, Thalidomide Ninja, and he is phocomelic—he was born with shortened arms after his mother was prescribed the drug Thalidomide while pregnant with him.

Born to parents who were no strangers to drama and theater, Mat first discovered that a flair for performance ran in the family when he was in school. It was during that time that he first learned to use humor in the face of prejudice and fear of his appearance. It was those very instances that helped turn Mat into a well-rounded performer whose career began with music.

In his early 30s, Fraser gave up his life as a musician to take up entertaining and making people laugh from a stage. Today, he still lives in search of good acting work on stage, screen, and radio and, in addition, creates his own opportunities as was the case when he thought up and performed in Thalidomide, a Musical.

An irreverent look at disability, Thalidomide was completely devoid of political correctness. It told the story of Glyn, a short-armed boy, and Katie, a well-to-do, able-bodied girl who falls for him and becomes obsessed with his short arms.

The musical was proof positive that Fraser intends to shock people out of the complacency and misguided notions that TV and the general media promote. “I don't believe any subject is too dark for comedy or musical theatre,” Fraser told BBC News. Still, the undercurrent of so much of what he does is universal: love.

Frasier’s skill on stage brought attention as well to how unfortunate it is that so many disabled character roles are filled by able-bodied actors. Fraser coined the term 'blacking up' to describe when an able-bodied actor plays the part of a disabled person rather than the part going to a disabled actor. The term was originally used to describe the controversial practice where non-black actors took on the characters of black people.

“…as for TV and film, it’s unforgivable in this day and age to have tired old inaccurate portrayals of, say, wheelchair users, when the actor has clearly only been in the bloody thing for about five minutes and there’s a perfectly good wheelchair using actor ready to do the role...,” Fraser said in one interview.

What’s Fraser up to today? He’s buckling down in an effort to finish writing his next play, A Multitude of Elvii, which he’s been working on for almost 18 months. “So no gigs or cabarets, live art shows or anything else now until it’s finished,” his Web site promises. In addition to working on his play, he’s waiting for the phone that doesn’t ring and wondering why he has only had two auditions in the last year. “All normal actor stuff I guess,” Fraser writes.

Learn more about Mat Fraser’s past, present, and future at matfraser.co.uk.