It's really strange to read an old media piece about yourself at any time. 

Even stranger when that piece is so rooted in time (May, 2020) and full of optimism - announcing your appointment as the first disabled artist to lead an arts organisation and shift its focus to disability leadership and disability arts. A role that you quietly leave after only a year (you can fill in the gaps) and which many people still assume you lead today.  

However, in all the change that has occurred from then until now, your (my) original intentions and artistic principles still ring true. 

"Disability and being disabled is my everyday life so the way I navigate the world is always going to be different,” Brown explains. “It’s about what are the things that are unique to disabled people and how can we make that interesting. In dance, what are different ways of choreographing movement that is seated or thinking about disabled aesthetics?" 

It’s now July 2025 and we are about to premiere a work called SIBLINGS (24-28 July, Te Pou Theatre) with a cast who identify in a myriad of ways - some with the term “disabled”, others with “lived experience" and others with a firm distaste for that word. 

And that’s okay. 

Our language can be different within our community but as long as we connect the work will make itself.  

The SIBLINGS cast are made up of artists (Dazz Whippey, Kiriana Sheree, Roka Bunyan, Jordan Kareroa and Hannah Josephson) that we met through many months of hosting open workshops in Auckland, asking for disabled people and their siblings to attend. We also visited different organisations such as Toi Ora and Circability to meet people. 

This casting process occurred in 2022/23 and we facilitated our first 6-week development shortly afterwards.  

Working together with our cast and production team - Barnie Duncan, Sally Barnett and Teiaro Taikato - was one of the most fulfilling creative processes. With our initial cast of seven, we embarked on exploring what Siblingdom looked like to us. We explored games, childhood memories and how to hold all of our collective access needs.  

I was interested in the dichotomies between siblings and how the disabled person can have agency. We posed these questions to our cast through talanoa, beginning with the word, defining it for ourselves before sharing our personal stories. These were recorded and this process is how we have continued to build our script.  

In year two, Barnie and I swapped and I moved into the Director role (a shift I was slightly afraid of). Our cast became smaller but our process - talanoa first leading into scene making - continued. We delved further into archetypes of siblings, physical movement and, for the first time, embedded audio description in our showing.  

This year we return, another year on, with more creatives joining our process. Our cast have - in the three years since we first met - deepened their performance skills with many exploring their own artistic practice through art, poetry and screen acting.  

When I look around the SIBLINGS rehearsal room, I think this is what I meant all those years ago when I returned home ready to jump into ‘disability leadership’ and share ‘New York style disability aesthetics.’ I’m using quotations because I realise now, reading this, how naive I was.

How I didn’t understand the cultural context of Aotearoa. And how glass cliff mentality does not like a loud, direct, “let me tell you what we do in New York”, person- lol. 

But really, not lol at all.  

Working at our slower pace (as Creative New Zealand funding rounds and rejections would allow us) and as we made this work independently contributed to our glacial pace. Some of us have had more children, moved, returned to our whenua and a core cast member passed away.  

This work is exciting to me - the artists we have been working with are committed to their craft and are funny, tender and smart. 

I’ve learnt a lot too. I am more soft on my language. We all don't have to identify the same way but our commitment to this work and to being accessible for each other is what makes this work important.  

My soapbox message today is simple: I’ve changed, I've learnt a lot about disability art in Aotearoa, and I’m proud of this work - come experience it for yourself.

SIBLINGS premieres at Te Pou Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau, 24-28 July.  NZSL Interpreted sessions available.