Nancy Cato

Nancy Cato

Nancy Cato is an actor/director, public speaker and writer whose name is synonymous with pioneering Children’s Television programs The Magic Circle Club and Adventure Island.

After training as an actor in the early 60s with the legendary Wal Cherry and Patricia Kennedy (and despite being born with profound hearing loss), Nancy began her career at the ABC television and radio studios and was appointed the first female presenter at regional TV station GMV-6, Shepparton.

Nancy became a paraplegic as the result of an accident at the ATV-O studios while recording an episode of The Magic Circle Club. Her subsequent healing of paraplegia and return to television has been documented in her published story in City Women Country Women Crossing the Boundaries. Nancy’s dual interests in young people’s development and metaphysical healing led her to London University and years of working with disadvantaged youth in the Northern Territory and the Mallee.

A mother of four, Nancy returned to the workforce in the 1990s to set up a community Arts Centre in a disused 100 year-old Church in Melbourne that became the internationally recognised arts precinct ‘Chapel Off Chapel’.

At 73, Nancy has again taken to writing, and has recently returned from London to see her play Bea OK (co-authored by Tony Taylor) presented as a Reading in the West End. She is currently working on a children’s book.

Nancy has equal enthusiasm for the arts, sport, community development, politics and her children and grandchildren – not necessarily in that order!

Bio Courtesy of Independent Australia