Writing about 'the other' when 'the other' is you

Helen Vivienne Fletcher’s love for writing was discovered in an unexpected way: as a youth support worker.

“So much of what you’re doing there, where you’re not a clinician, is just sharing your own story, sharing their story, holding space for people’s stories.” From experiences like those, her interest in storytelling started to take shape in the form of writing. 

Fletcher is a children’s and young adult author and award-winning playwright. Only in the last few years she’s got back into theatre-making. When she graduated from drama school 20 years ago, accessibility in theatre wasn’t really talked about. “It was, if you are disabled, you have to pretend to be an able-bodied person.” Because her disability had developed at that time, she focused on writing instead.

After reentering the theatre scene many years later, she sensed attitudes were changing towards disability. For one, disabled people were actually being cast for disabled characters. She adds, people were also open to considering whether a character needed to be non-disabled. That’s when Fletcher was invited into the theatre company, Magnificent Weirdos, which brought together five New Zealand playwrights to create new plays, all featuring disabled characters in Five Slices of Another Life.

“I think there are a lot of roles where they’re not being cast as disabled people because the processes for auditioning are not set up in a way that welcomes disabled people.” For example, she says it can be helpful when audition notices explicitly welcome people of any ability, otherwise, she says, “if it’s not mentioned, it’s kind of assumed that we’ll only cast a disabled person if the character is specifically disabled”.

Fletcher’s stories tend to be dark, absurd and mysterious with themes of disability and mental health, she says. “My writing has been described as writing ‘the other’, which the first time I heard that, I didn’t know what to do with it because I didn’t feel like I was writing the other; I was writing my own experiences or variations of them.”

As the recipient of the 2024 residency at Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, she’s recently developed two new play ideas, The God of Unborn Children and Three Feet Under. The residency began in 2023 out of Wellington City Council’s Aho Tini Arts and Culture Strategy where disabled artists sector development was part of its action plan. 

While Three Feet Under is an absurd comedy about two girls burying a body in their backyard, The God of Unborn Children strikes a little closer to home for Fletcher. The play is about the things that may stop people from being able to have children such as infertility and miscarriages, and the alternative narratives around it that don’t speak of it as a taboo.

The six-week residency gave Fletcher the time and space to flesh out these plays with mentorship from her chosen mentor, Jason Te Kare, who she’d week-after-week receive feedback from. “I’ve done other residencies before but I’ve tended to go for one’s that are one week or two weeks [long] because being out of my own environment is quite difficult because I don’t have all the support and mobility aids and things that I would have at home.” Fletcher was grateful for the option of being able to work between home and the residency space.

She tells us that Three Feet Under will be performed at the 2025 Wellington Fringe, while she’s waiting for the right team to put on The God of the Unborn Children. As the residency opens up for its third round in the coming summer, Fletcher is encouraging anyone who comes under the banner of disability, neurodivergence and/or D/deafness, to absolutely go for it. “The value of the residency is quite a bit beyond the work you do there.”

2025 will be the third year of Toi Pōneke’s d/Deaf and/or Disabled Artist Development Residency. The six-week residency takes place between 10 February to 23 March. This opportunity is currently open to one d/Deaf and/or disabled artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara to develop new work. You can apply here by 5pm, Monday 18 November. 

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