LONDON (Reuters) - Of the wealth of aspiring talent taking part in this month's Edinburgh Festival and Fringe, some performers have fought harder than others to find an audience.

Among those battling against the odds is Britain's leading disabled actors' company Graeae which is staging a brutally honest mixture of tragedy and farce as part of its campaign to move disabled players into the mainstream.

The play, "Peeling," came about as Graeae's artistic director Jenny Sealey, who is deaf, and actor/writer Kaite O'Reilly, who was partially sighted when Sealey first knew her -- though she has since had corrective surgery -- compared their respective methods of communication.

"We were actors together at Graeae," said Sealey. "We were interested in the relationship between my communication that was very visual and hers that was very aural."

Of the resulting drama that confronts disability head on, she said: "It's about tragedy and farce and smashes the myth that disabled people are always nice. These women are really bitchy."

DEFYING DEAFNESS

Sealey went deaf at the age of seven. She had already begun learning to dance. "I figured out I could probably carry on," she said and subsequently studied dance at university.

But what she really wanted to do was act and so she joined Graeae after graduating.

Based in London, Graeae was set up in 1980 by disabled actors Nabil Shaban and Richard Tomlinson, who called it Graeae simply because they liked the name.

Shaban has since made it into the mainstream, performing in television roles and in major theaters.

But he is one of the lucky few.

While Britain is relatively enlightened, it needs to make progress, said Sealey. The Arts Council England, which gives funding, is supportive, but mainstream drama does not always follow that through by providing jobs.

"Britain has a very strong and vibrant disabled artists' movement which is recognized by the funding system, but is not necessarily recognized by the mainstream," said Sealey.

SLOW PROGRESS

The task of integrating disabled actors into drama schools and major productions means persuading key venues to give them a chance.

"It is really important to get to be seen in the right venues," said Sealey. "We also want a more mainstream audience, so they will see and not be scared of disability."

In some respects, Sealey likens the challenge facing disabled actors to that facing black and Asian performers.

"They say that to be a black actor, you have to be better than a white actor," she said. Equally disabled actors need to outperform those with no disadvantages, even though for many at Graeae the company provides their first job and they probably haven't had the benefit of three years at acting school.

But compared with disabled theater workers, who remain relatively low profile, Sealey considers black and Asian performers have made great headway.

"The black theater movement exploded," said Sealey, although research still shows Britain's black and Asian actors are under-represented in mainstream arts.

TOURING THE TOUGHEST TASK

For any actor, the toughest test is touring. It is especially hard for disabled actors for whom a constantly changing environment can be gruelling.

"Touring is particularly brutal. It's about survival of the fittest," said Sealey.

After its Edinburgh performances at the end of August, Peeling will tour Britain and also go to France as part of events marking 2003 as European Year of Disabled People.

Next year is International Year of Disabled People and Sealey's ambition is to take a Graeae production to the biennial High Beam Festival in Adelaide, Australia, which showcases work inspired by disability.

It all amounts to progress, but the ultimate goal is that it will no longer be necessary to have a company exclusively for disabled actors. Instead, it would be perfectly natural for a mainstream production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" to cast Lady Macbeth for a woman in a wheelchair, for instance.

As artistic director of a respected theater company, Sealey has mixed feelings about its eventual demise, but she is saving her sorrow for the distant future.