Health News - 27-year-old gives up home to fund drama project for those with the ‘hidden difference’

Published: 25 November, 2010
by TOM FOOT

LENNIE Varvarides is a multi-tasker.

Fixing the internet with one hand, phone in the other, juggling the launch of her boutique actors agency and organising a festival of theatre at Theatro Technis.

The 27-year-old has made herself homeless to fund the drama project – the only festival in the world dedicated to dyslexic playwrights.

“Multi-tasking is one of the traits of dyslexia,” she says. “But we have many talents.”

Dys-Pla – five nights of shows with a question-and-answer session with playwright Jim Cartwright – coincided with National Dyslexic Week in November.

Lennie says: “People with dyslexia are well suited to the arts – we’re made for it. We have an approach to writing that is very different. We don’t necessarily begin at the beginning. The result is quite unusual and unpredictable.

“There is one play by Matthew Scurfield that dips in and out of reality – it starts quite Shakespearean, then moves to a TV interview, to real life. That’s the thing with dyslexia – you kind of jump in and out of time.”

Then comes the crash.

She says: “It’s a bit like if you leave too many pages open on the computer. Sometimes I am just doing too many things at once and I crash. It happens all the time.”

Lennie was not diagnosed with dyslexia until she was 19 years old and at art college. Up until then, she had been struggled to understand why she couldn’t match her thoughts in writing.

She said: “It messed up my early years at primary school. I had come to England from Cyprus and I think everyone just assumed English was my second language. I had an extremely active imagination – I enjoyed making stuff up. 

“At secondary, I was no good at anything except for drama. I thought I was a bit slow and I didn’t know why – I was frustrated. I didn’t understand sometimes when it was writing, but when people spoke to me I did. I was put in the special class.”

She added: “That’s why they call it the hidden difference. I think schools need to start thinking how to make people learn differently. There needs to be a new way to teach. They should teach more visual and kinetically.”

Lennie went on to direct shows in New York, coming back to London to get a drama writing masters. 

Her Camden base is Theatro Technis in Mornington Crescent, where she counts its founder George Eugeniou as something of a father figure.

She said: “This year, I gave up my home so I could get the money for Dys-Pla. 

“But it was all worth it. It’s been great. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve made any money out of theatre. I’m so used to losing each time – we started with nothing. It means we can reinvest in the next one.”

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