Playwright uses campaigner as fertile medium

Writer Stephanie Johnson and actor Sara Wiseman who plays Lotti Wilmot in Strange Children. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

New Zealand has a proud history of strong, stroppy and opinionated women. Strange Children, a new play by Aucklander Stephanie Johnson, puts one such woman centre-stage.

The play is about Lotti Wilmot, an enigmatic figure who arrived in New Zealand in the late 1800s, ruffled the nation's feathers, then died alone and impoverished in Upper Hutt aged 37.

"I first came across Lotti in Stevan Eldred-Grigg's book Pleasures Of The Flesh: Sex and Drugs in Colonial New Zealand," Johnson says. "There was a small entry about her, and a pen and ink drawing, and she just took my fancy.

"What we know about her is very little. Her parents may have been French, and she either married in India or went there shortly after being married.

"Her husband died there. She had a daughter who was 10 when Lotti arrived here. She was an actress in France and England, and came to Australia as part of a theatre troupe."

Wilmot left acting and became a self-styled "inspirational lecturess" and a medium. She advocated temperance and an early brand of feminism, and had set ideas on religion.

Wilmot would march into pubs to challenge the men drinking there, often went into brothels to console prostitutes, and overseas was known to attend rape trials to gather evidence of how unfairly rape victims were treated by the justice system.

In New Zealand, town authorities banned Wilmot from giving her lectures within town or city limits.

"Lotti had a great deal of practicality and pragmatism, combined with a vibrant political awareness and an otherworldliness.

"She seems to have been a very bright and lively woman who enjoyed having people listen to her opinions."

As a medium, she claimed to help grieving mothers contact their children, a common service at the time.

Johnson had her work cut out writing about Lotti Wilmot. "I thought I was going to write a historical biopic, but it was around the same time that fertility science was taking off. I was in France on a writing fellowship and an Italian doctor had helped a woman in her 60s give birth to what was essentially a whole litter of babies. The whole area of fertility science suddenly opened up.

"I don't want to upset anyone who is trying to have children, and I have no problem with science helping women who are still bleeding to have children.

"But I don't like the idea of impregnating post-menopausal women. I think it is damaging as far as the child is concerned. It is playing with the whole idea of who we are and where we come from as individuals. And I hope a theatre audience is open to debating the issue."

So the historical biopic went out the window. In Strange Children, Johnson not only presents the historical Wilmot, but also drops the character into the 21st century. Her aim is to explore how middle-class attitudes towards children have changed since the late 19th century.

"Lotti in the 19th century is helping women contact their dead children, very much an issue of the day. In the 21st century she is helping a couple have a child by being a surrogate."

Actress Sara Wiseman, who plays both Wilmots, says: "Lotti challenged the double standard of the time. She got in the way of the worthy men of the community.

"When I first read the play I found the writing very elegant and compelling, and wanted to keep turning the pages to find out what happened to the characters. But I didn't realise Lotti was a real person, and once I knew that I was absolutely intrigued."

It seems that Lotti Wilmot has that effect on people.

On stage

* What: Strange Children, by Stephanie Johnson
* Where and when: Herald Theatre, May 27-June 12