Sofya Gollan

“Like a missile seeking its target, the soup ended up all over the film producers lap,” reflects Sofya Gollan on her stint working as a waitress at an upmarket restaurant. Balancing plates was a precarious art never quite perfected. “I didn't last long there,” muses Gollan.

Nowadays, Gollan can be found with a pen rather than a menu in her hand. As a script editor, director and writer, Gollan currently has two feature films in production: Melt, a story of the perils of friendship between two women; and Set-Up, an adaptation of a Peter Corris novel.

Following her graduation from National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Gollan felt drawn to directing after completing a short filmmaking course at New York University, followed by a masters in directing from the Australian Film and Television Radio School (AFTRS). Directing several award-winning short films, including the AFI nominated Preservation, saw Gollan shift her focus away from acting.

“The only restrictions I had were the ones I had placed on myself, and once I realised this was something I could pursue the ceiling lifted in terms of the things I wanted to achieve.”

Gollan is already a familiar face to many, as the first presenter to use Auslan on ABC's Play School. “Children who are deaf around the country get to see a positive role model on television and think, I'm not alone.”

Her son Vincent, aged two, is a fan. “He loves it,” she says, but “it's rationed just like all good things in life!”

In 2006, Gollan wrote and directed the Cat Lady of Bexley for the Australian Theatre of the Deaf. The play is based on the story of Patricia Carlon, played by Gollan herself. An enigmatic and reclusive crime novelist, Carlon's profound deafness from childhood remained unknown until her death in 2002. Intricately inter-weaving time and narrative, the play shifts between imagining Carlon's existence growing up in the 1940's to the story of a young woman, Billie, who is confronting a late onset deafness.

In contrast to Carlon, who relied on letters for correspondence, the advent of modern technology has paved the way for many advantages.

“Email and the Internet has meant that people with a disability are able to connect on a far greater scale than ever before so I certainly don't feel as isolated as she would have been,” says Gollan.

“I have a cochlea implant which has made a huge difference, and that option certainly wasn't available to Patricia Carlon when her hearing aids failed to give her any meaningful sound, like mine did.” With recent motherhood, a new play and documentary now in the works, life is very full at the moment.

“Although I would say my deafness has coloured my work somewhat, it's much more visual, and there's a peculiar kind of bent to it. But I'd say that's true of any director. Their life experience, colours the work they do.”

SARAH TRACTON