“I want to share my story and help people,” 19-year-old Luke Hogan Laurenson typed into his keyboard, explaining why he wants to undertake a career as a motivational speaker. His mother said he has been preparing for the role since he was five years old.

A 2023 graduate of Ashland High School in Ashland, Ore., Laurenson played the role of Spike in 58 performances of “Hairspray” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and visited West Sedona School on Thursday, March 7, to discuss his acting and disability.

“Shortly after birth, I was diagnosed with quadriplegia cerebral palsy and dysarthria,” a speech and language disability, Laurenson wrote on his website. “Doctors told me that I would never be able to walk and would be institutionalized for life, but I had bigger dreams. Not only was I able to walk unassisted at age 12, I also began dancing a month later — thank you, Taylor Swift — and even became a professional actor. Now that I’ve graduated high school as a valedictorian, I want to bring my story of hope and resilience across America.”

After hundreds of medical appointments and surgeries, Laurenson remains optimistic and his family said that they view his condition more as a blessing than an affliction.

“We wouldn’t survive if we didn’t view it that way,” his mother Jane Marie Hogan said. “It’s just so hard if you just get mired in how challenging it is. And you just let yourself be defeated by it, [those feelings] can take you under, and it has at times. So we’ve just decided to focus as much as we can on the positive in every place we can find it because it makes our days turn out a lot better.” 

Laurenson said his playlist includes Adele, Ed Sheeran, One Direction and Harry Styles, although he added that Taylor Swift’s discography has had the greatest effect on his life. A YouTube video produced to promote one of his fundraisers described Swift’s song “Shake It Off” as his anthem.

Laurenson took his first steps in December 2016 after doctors told his mother when he was six days old that he would never walk or talk.

The following month he was dancing.

“He was just determined that he was going to dance to that song by himself, and it was his North Star,” Hogan said. “That was the … initial miracle. Certainly getting ‘Hairspray’ and being hired as a professional actor at age 14 for a 10-month contract as well … The day after his sister was valedictorian of her graduating class, he came to me and said, ‘Mom, I’m going to be valedictorian.’”

Laurenson will also be appearing in a forthcoming documentary, “Including Us: Exceptional Teens at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival,” that covers the version of “Hairspray” in which he performed.

“[Hogan] sent me a video of Luke dancing,” director Christopher Liam Moore said in a promotional video. “His will, his force of will, his desire enabled this young man to get up and walk and to dance. When I saw this, I just knew it was my responsibility to share that.”

Laurenson shares his own experiences with others by writing his speech and programing that “into his talk buddy machine,” Hogan said,  and “with his head pointer [attached to a baseball cap] pushes buttons in the sequence to deliver it.”

For more casual conversations or when he wants to talk more extemporaneously, he uses am iPad.

“Before ‘Hairspray,’ people would just stare at him, and would be afraid to come up and speak with him,” Hogan said, explaining the challenge of her son being an extrovert in his situation. “And ever since, in our town, people are much friendlier to him, and much more courageous or much more willing to come up.”

Laurenson has a GoFundMe for a Winnebago for more information on how to contribute click here.