Oliver Hetherington-Page
Oliver Hetherington-Page is an award-winning writer/producer/actor and disability arts advocate. He graduated from QUT with a BFA Drama minoring in Creative Writing (with Distinction) at the end of 2019.
As a playwright, in 2021 Oliver debuted The No Bang Theory at the Bille Brown Theatre as part of the Undercover Artist Festival. The rave reviews allowed Oliver to do two return seasons to Brisbane and tour the show around the country including seasons at Melbourne and Adelaide fringes. This culminated in Oliver receiving both the 2022 Access Arts Achievement Award and a Matilda Award for Best Emerging Artist in 2023. The show is about to start touring schools starting at State High in March.
He debuted his follow-up work, Santa Claus is Autistic, in Redlands in November 2023 before touring the show to Brisbane in December. The work featured Australia’s first autism choir The Spectrum Singers. For his work in creating The Spectrum Singers, he received a special commendation from the Governor of Queensland for Autistic Queenslander of the Year.
In 2023, he participated in both the La Boite Assembly and Playlab Incubator programmes where Oliver began developing his play Ten Eulogies for a Complicated Man. Since 2020 he’s been a member of Indelabilityarts ensemble and in 2024, is also helping to develop a series of school touring shows with the company, XOXO Gatsby for high schoolers and Mind Quest for primary schools.
He has also written quite extensively on the topic of disability art and access for autistic people and is quickly becoming one of the go-to people to talk on the topic appearing on television programs such as Q&A, local radio shows in Brisbane, The Gold Coast, The Scenic Rim, Darwin, Adelaide and Ipswich and podcasts such as The Daily Red and PsychoCinematic. His writing on the topic appeared in ABC Online, Take 5 and Linked Disability Magazine. In 2023 he worked with Queensland Theatre on Drizzle Boy as an Autism Advisor. This work has gone into the development of his play A Touch of the Tism.
Beyond playwriting, in 2022 he was the Keynote speaker at the National Montessori Educators conference, talking to teachers about autism, and that continued into 2023 where he both emceed the Advocacy Intensive Program run by Amaze (Autism Victoria) and the Access Arts 40th Birthday Unite Event.