More About Donna Williams
Written by admin2 on February 10th, 2007Filed under: Regular Contributors, Donna Williams, Themes, Auties & Aspies
Donna on being an incredibly reluctant public speaker:
I was an incredibly reluctant public speaker. I have no natural desire to gain attention, have no emotional use for applause, have no natural desire to be looked at and much prefer solitude and autonomy. I feel I’m a cat-person in what is often a dog-person world. At my first US talk (Connecticut) I came out and sat and cried for the first five minutes. The audience was silent and patient and I was so moved they didn’t try to control me or talk to me, they just let me be, they trusted. I honored that respect and eventually got to my feet and read the pages I couldn’t understand in this state of shutdown until the words began to have meaning. In between I looked up, cried again and continued. They taught me I could dare to be me before others no matter what. They gave me so much more than I could give. Now I just walk out and introduce myself and talk out loud allowing others to hear. I even challenge my audiences to question me and answer them without the middle man of typing and paper.
However I may be criticized or praised and for whatever reason you came to read the words of this once crazy girl with more labels than a jam jar, I am proud of me just to be and you are welcome to find your being-ness here for your own sake.
… Donna Williams *
Some words on how the late Peter Jennings once managed to convince Donna to grant him an interview:
When Donna Williams’ publicists began accepting interviews, they were offered for her to appear on many television shows in the UK and USA. Donna made it clear at that time, in 1990, that this was basically going to be impossible, that she felt too overwhelmed by being filmed, wouldn’t cope with TV studios, wouldn’t cope with applause, wouldn’t keep up fluently with the language used to address her, feared she’d be unable to make fluent sense in responding verbally (she felt confident with typed replies, even reading those) or the overhead lights or being handled by make-up artists and the likes, as happens with TV shows.
It wasn’t until 1992 that the late Peter Jennings flew from the USA to interview Donna in London, UK for Person of the Week; no lights, no make up, no studios, no audience. They walked around a park as the cameraman ran along in the bushes filming them talking through lapel microphones.
In 1993, Edie Magnus from Eye to Eye with Connie Chung flew to London and drove to Wales to film Donna. This time it was a studio type setting, in an old Manor House hired for the interview. Donna had the crew make noises and jump to show their ‘real selves’ before she would allow them to film her being her self. The crew looked to Edie Magnus perplexed at the request but Edie had them comply. One who was unable to relax and be himself in these tasks was simply banished from the room when Donna declared that if he couldn’t show her his real self, then she felt too invaded and exposed to have him look through a lens and film her being her self (as opposed to her well honed capacity to mimic non-autistic people). The cameraman had to wait outside and the rest of the crew were accepted and filming got underway without problem. The result was that Donna dared to allow cameras to directly capture her in a TV interview in a studio setting for the first time.
