Letting my stammer 'come out into the room'

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George (left) as Harold Craven, with Lord Craven (courtesy of Alex Brenner)

Actor George Fletcher tells us how playing a character who stammers in a theatre play impacted his own speech and ultimately his attitude towards it.

For the last month, a strange thing happened at around 8 o'clock every evening. A door slid across a stage, a man held up a lantern and I found myself stepping into a scene. In front of up to 1,300 people I began a sentence and then I stopped and I was stammering. In the past this could have been an actual nightmare; hundreds of faces staring at me whilst my neck constricts and the sound is swallowed again and again and again. But there was no dread. No fear. No instant panic or shame. This was something new. This happened every night, eight times a week.

My name is George, I am an actor and I've just finished performing in a production of The Secret Garden at Regent's Park Open Air theatre, as a character who stammers. 

Drama school

Acting is what I've wanted to do since I was three. I am also a stammerer and have never known what it's like to not be one. They are two strands of my life I have always endeavoured to keep very separate.

I will always remember the day at drama school when my stammer 'came out into the room' and from that time on it was impossible to compress or control. A door to something I kept having to close. I spent three years learning how to breathe, how to speak Shakespeare and how to sit with perfect posture. But I had to wade through it all, not knowing some days if I could even say a first line. 

I never quite understand why on some jobs I feel its presence and on others I leave with none of my castmates ever knowing I stammer.

There was the day in my second year when a major television casting director came in for one-on-one sessions and I couldn't even say my own name. I ran out of the school and got on the first train that arrived at the station. I went back a few weeks later, heavy with shame and fearing what life on the other side of graduation would bring.

When I did graduate, however, I found happiness in rehearsal rooms, working on new writing and the fringe theatre scene in London. In some rooms my stammer emerged and it was something I took great pain and effort to conceal. In other rooms it was never there at all. I never quite understand why on some jobs I feel its presence and on others I leave with none of my castmates ever knowing I stammer. But it was always something to mask, to hide and excuse. Something I avoided talking about with other cast members. Until this year, that is. 

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Actor George Fletcher (centre) with The Secret Garden cast (courtesy of Alex Brenner)

Exploring attitudes to disability

In The Secret Garden, I played Doctor Harold Craven, who in this version has a stammer. It's a beautiful retelling of the classic 1911 Frances Hodgson Burnett book examining disability and ableism with a new clarity and focus. Harold's stammer is another locked door in Misselthwaite Manor, something evident that is shunned. His brother talks over him, finishes his sentences and ignores him. 

It's the first time I have ever stammered in my life without shame. 

There is a beautiful moment in Act 2 when Colin, Harold's nephew, talks over his uncle's stammer and the protagonist Mary Lennox stops him and asks why he is doing that. The culture of speaking over Harold is laid bare and it's an important moment in the play when the characters start examining and changing their attitudes to disability around them. I hope this is something an audience can take away with them, this moment of acknowledgement of the pain felt by people who stammer when they are talked over, ignored and have their sentences finished for them. I occasionally heard audience members laughing at the stammer at the start of the play, but never at the end. And that felt like a change had taken place.

Being vulnerable

I won't lie, it was incredibly challenging to play a stammerer. During the first two weeks of rehearsals my fluency day to day was dramatically affected and it was a hugely vulnerable place to sit in. But thanks to the kindness and care of our director Anna Himali Howard, our writer Holly Robinson and the cast and crew, I slowly found Harold's stammer, one that was not my own, but was a relation. It was then something simulated, or something I allowed to flow through me on stage. Something I had control over but was invited in. I let the stammer 'come out into the room' and it was welcome and necessary. It's the first time I have ever stammered in my life without shame. 

And much like Mary discovering the secret garden, I find myself discovering something new. A new feeling. Something that was once unloved and shut away. A door I closed a long, long time ago when I was a child.

On one of the days, before the show, I ordered some lunch and found myself stammering in front of the waiter. One of my least favourite situations. But now I've stammered in front of hundreds of faces. I know what kindness a Mary Lennox would allow. I didn't panic or mask it or let shame creep in. I stood there and I stammered and then the word came. Afterwards I sat down in a large room, an actor and a stammerer, and I ate some food and the world turned around me. A shoot of green began to grow and all the doors were open.

STAMMA volunteer John Russell went to see The Secret Garden — read his article 'Stammering & The Secret Garden' in which he comments on the portrayal of stammering and the themes George mentions.