Performers With Disabilities Act Up and Speak Out : Casting: A showcase helps broaden Hollywood’s perceptions of disabled actors.

Michael Lee Gogin is a 4-foot-3-inch person of short stature--as he prefers to be called--with acting credits ranging from “Runaway Train” to the daytime soap “Santa Barbara.” Despite marrying a 5-foot-2-inch woman and fathering two children, he regularly confronts producers’ and casting directors’ perceptions that, he said, “people our size are asexual; it’s not possible to do love scenes.”

Alan Toy, a post-polio partial paraplegic whose 50-plus acting credits include “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Matlock” and local theater, lists on his resume such skills as swimming, horseback riding and deep-sea fishing. But, he said, “I was not allowed to even read for a role where there was a stunt in which I would have been thrown off a boat. I told them I was a strong swimmer, but it didn’t matter.”

Bob Hiltermann has appeared in the film “Children of a Lesser God,” television’s “Bridge to Silence” and “Tin Man,” and commercials and theater. Hard of hearing, he signs fluently and talks with a pronounced but comprehensible speech impediment. “(Casting directors and producers) say, ‘Where are you from? You sound Dutch,’ ” he said.

All are trying to make it in a Hollywood that has produced Oscar-winning performances from Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Marlon Brando, Patty Duke and Daniel Day-Lewis for playing disabled characters, but few roles--even bit parts--for disabled actors.

For every Phyllis Frelich and Marlee Matlin, the hearing-impaired stars of the Broadway and film versions of “Children of a Lesser God,” and for every Christopher Burke, the actor with Down’s syndrome who stars in ABC’s “Life Goes On,” there are dozens of other performers with disabilities, such as Gogin, Toy and Hiltermann, who don’t get return calls.

Approximately 250 of the more than 70,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild have identified themselves as having a disability--defined as anything which hinders one’s ability to perform life’s normal functions. These include an estimated 300 of the 30,000 performers belonging to the Los Angeles chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and about 150 of Actors’ Equity Assn.’s 40,000 members; overlapping memberships among the three unions make a precise total difficult to obtain.

Whatever their exact numbers, these performers have found that dealing with their disabilities is the relatively easy part. The hard part, they say is getting the entertainment industry to:

* Take notice of disabled performers’ talents.

* Stop equating disability with incapability.

* Do away with focusing on stereotypicaly villainous roles played by disabled actors.

* Provide equitable representation in entertainment projects.

There are an estimated 43 million disabled Americans--the country’s largest minority, other than men--and they want to forever dispel such words as handicapped , victim and wheelchair-bound from the industry’s collective vocabulary.

Accordingly, SAG, AFTRA and Equity, under the aegis of their Interguild Committee on Performers with Disabilities, presented their first-ever showcase in February to demonstrate the skills of these performers. About 45 casting directors and other observers gathered at SAG’s Hollywood Boulevard headquarters to watch 19 duos enact three-minute scenes, encompassing everything from an original comedy about a couple meeting through the personals to “Glengarry Glen Ross,” and the evening’s undisputed highlight, the hilarious “Deaf Master Jam” performed by Hiltermann and partner C. J. Jones.

“We wanted to make people aware that actors with disabilities do have talent and should be cast, not only in roles that call for a disability (such as a Vietnam War veteran or an accident victim) but also in roles where the disability is incidental to a character,” said Rodney Mitchell, Affirmative Action Coordinator for SAG.

The showcase is similar to those sponsored sporadically by the Media Access Office, the Van Nuys-based organization created in 1980 as a liaison between the media/entertainment industry and the disability community.

“This industry worships the new. We’re not new, we’re not unique any more,” said Toy, who in May produced two showcases presented by the Media Access Office. “I’ve been lucky, in that many of the jobs I’ve had were non-stereotypical, but lately I’m finding more and more that the roles I go up for are specific, shocking, stereotypical disability roles, because we’re past the point of being new and faddish and are falling back to the way Hollywood knows how to show us, as angry or offbeat. After 11 1/2 years here, it’s perplexing and frustrating.”

Said actress Christopher Templeton, who since 1982 has played Carol Robbins Evans on CBS’ “The Young and the Restless”: “I’ve worked more regularly than just about anyone else in this town who has a disability, and I’m still very discouraged. . . . It’s the producers you have to reach, and they’ve shown very little commitment.”

It is just that sort of producer prejudice which can put even the most enlightened casting director in an awkward position, said showcase attendee April Webster, who casts the CBS show “The Flash” and is co-chair of the CSA’s Non-traditional Casting Committee. “You can try to bring in people (with disabilities for roles) but it’s not always easy. . . . All you can do is keep bringing the actors in.”