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When a degenerative disease robbed Holly Craig of her eyesight, she gave up on her dreams of a career on stage.
She quit her Theatre Studies degree in Bathurst and moved back to Sydney.
"I thought that was the end of my performing career or my career in the theatre or doing anything creative," she said.
Almost a decade later, Craig, now 27, is beginning to dream again, as she takes centre stage for a solo dance in a production at the Australian Theatre for Young People in Sydney.
"When I dance, it doesn't matter how much I weigh," she said, "or that I have a disability."
"I feel capable, I feel strong and I feel beautiful."
The stage floor for the production, Dignity of Risk, has been specially designed to allow Craig to feel her way around.
"I can really only see light and dark," she said. "I can see the lights but that's about all."
The play brings together actors from youth organisation Shopfront's Harness ensemble — a group made up predominately of young actors with disabilities — and the Australian Theatre for Young People.
Steve Konstantopoulos, an actor from Shopfront, has never had to memorise lines for a production before. The concentration required to recall them is written across his face in each scene.
That wasn't the only barrier he had to overcome.
In a dramatic dance scene he confronts his fear of pears.
"I love fruit, by the way," Konstantopoulos said. "I could eat fruit 27 hours in a day, but just not pears."
In the scene, Konstantopoulos and co-actor Caspar Hardaker wrestle on the floor over a pear.
This, too, was new ground for Konstantopoulos, because he doesn't like being touched.
"Being able to be grasped by Caspar is really difficult for me," he said.
"I really find it hard to keep my composure."
There is a point near the end of the play where the actors try to form a line based on who is most disabled.
In keeping with the rest of the production, the scene is both humorous and confronting.
"I have mental illness," Wendi Lanham says, shoving fellow actor Jake Pafumi further down the line.
"I've had mental illness," Pafumi replies. "I've had anorexia," he says, pushing himself back in front of Lanham.
"I can't eat enough because I don't have enough [money] to live properly," Hardaker says.
"I feel I should be the most disadvantaged here," Riana Shakirra Head-Toussaint interrupts, as she manoeuvres her wheelchair towards the front of the line. "You guys are all really tall."
By this stage, it's unclear which of the 11 actors has a diagnosable disability, and this turns out to be the play's central message.
"I think there's been a real comfort that we've found that regardless of ability we all feel a bit crappy sometimes and that it is hard to navigate through the world, especially as a young adult," The play's director, Natalie Rose, said.
Each cast member shares intimate details of their anxieties, their fears, and their hopes.
"I feel that this show really represents Australia's landscape," Rose said.
"I hope that audiences will definitely see themselves on stage and be able to identify with a character and really be able to connect and go, 'Well, I've felt like that, too', or, 'I've experienced that exact same thing'.
Head-Toussaint added: "Once you share things that you perceived as vulnerabilities, there's like a weight taken off you and then instead of them holding you back you feel freed, and that freedom drives you forward."
Watch the story on Lateline at 9:30pm on the ABC News channel and 10:30pm on ABC TV.
Topics: theatre, arts-and-entertainment, disabilities, youth, sydney-2000