Ep 081: How to Train Your Dragon and Living with Blindness and a Brain Tumour
Actor, writer, and disability advocate, Alicia Grace is a spark of joy! She joined us to talk about living with blindness and a brain tumor. We talk about How to Train Your Dragon, the first film that helped her connect to her disability, and the limited series, All the Light We Cannot See, which included a blind character (and actor) who was more than her disability.
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Alicia really wants to have more authentic representations of people living with a brain tumor on film and TV. Brain tumors are often used to have a character suddenly on their deathbed or show a miracle cure moment, but often people with brain tumors live on a wait-and-watch period, like Alicia, who has had her brain tumor her whole life. Her mantra is No Day But Today – a song in the musical Rent by Jonathan Larson. He inspired her to live her life in love and not fear, as she lives through six-month periods between MRI scans.
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Music: Deppisch
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ABOUT OUR GUEST
Alicia Grace Chenier is a blind actor, director, accessibility consultant, and disability advocate based in Ontario, Canada. Living with blindness and with a brain tumour, Alicia brings both lived experience and creative vision to everything she does.
As a performer and filmmaker, Alicia is passionate about reshaping how disability is portrayed in film and television. She advocates for inclusive casting, accessible production environments, and stories that position disabled characters as complex, ambitious, and fully human. Drawing from her own experiences navigating the entertainment industry as a blind actor, she is committed to challenging outdated standards and expanding what representation looks like on screen.
Alicia is currently completing her Bachelor’s degree in Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. Through her studies, she is intentionally building the knowledge and tools to strengthen her work in film and television, with a focus on disability theory, representation, and systemic change. What she learns in the classroom directly informs her creative work, allowing her to approach storytelling with both lived experience and a deeper critical understanding. Alongside her artistic career, she works as a self-employed Accessibility Consultant supporting organizations across Canada in creating more inclusive spaces.
Film and TV Shows that most resonated with Alicia:
While my authentic lived experiences have not been super accurately shown within film and TV, with living with a brain tumour and blindness, here is a list of movies and series I resonate with most in how I connected to them with my disability and life experience:
Movies:
•Tick Tick Boom (Musical movie on Netflix), based on Jonathan Larson and a huge inspiration of mine for the work I do and create. In my opinion, he was ahead of his time in the work he created and the messages he sought to convey through his art. So much of the work I do now is similar to Jonathan's in that he wanted to create work that was slightly political for the times he was living in. His work was also based heavily on the community. If I had to say which movie accurately described my lived experience right now, it would be this one.
•Rent (Musical movie), where the theme is No Day But Today. The characters in this show live within the aids epidemic, but I connect to this show on a deeper level of living every day like it’s our last. And living life in love and not fear. Living with a brain tumour (while I am currently stable with mine) is just so uncertain, and so I can’t live my life in fear of the unknown cause that wouldn’t be living.
•How to Train Your Dragon (Animated Trilogy) I grew up with these movies, and being the same age as the characters, as they were all released. At the end of the first movie, the main character has a disability. As someone who grew up with not a lot of authentic representation of disability on screen, this was huge when I seen it, although I didn’t have the same disability as the main character I found that in each movie we were going through the same phases of life and ways of viewing disability.
TV Series:
•All the Light We Cannot See (Limited on Netflix) was the first show I saw about blindness that was very similar to my own. I resonated with the character being blind, but also, this was one of the first times the character was more than her disability.
LINKS
Find Alicia Grace online: IG/TikTok
Other episodes you’ll enjoy:
Vision Loss and Blindness on Sight Unseen - Episode 046
You’re Not Alone: How Stigma Hurts Everyone - Episode 036
Depression: A conversation with the creators of CBC Gem’s Get Up, Aisha - Episode 052