How do two people write a play together? Co-writers Roshelle Yee Pui Fong and Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan reflect on the evolution of their intercultural sci-fi comedy and what role writers play during the rehearsal process.
In a nutshell, what has been this play's journey from inception to now?
We’ve been super lucky to realise The Robot Dog through Melbourne Theatre Company’s writing programs. Roshelle first explored a seed of the idea in an online playwriting course at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (2020). She continued developing it in Melbourne Theatre Company’s ‘First Stage’ program (2021), culminating in a reading for the Emerging Writers’ Festival.
Soon after, the two of us met online in Creative Australia’s ‘Digital Fellowship Program’. We discovered Matt made a dog-like rover for his Masters of Applied Cybernetics, and from then, our creative fate was sealed. Matt became Roshelle’s mentor, and we collaborated on the work for Cybec Scenes (2022), which was commissioned for NEXT STAGE Writers’ Program later that year.
As our friendship and collaborative relationship grew, the play increasingly reflected aspects of our selves; our humour, various perspectives on themes like AI, grief and racism, and our experiences code-switching, and attempting to connect to culture in the colony.
This journey has been one of the most nourishing creative processes we’ve had… It’s testament to the magic that can happen when artists are supported to collaborate across cultures and disciplines, with adequate time to build thick, meaningful relationships.
Co-writers Roshelle Yee Pui Fong and Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan in rehearsal. Photo: Blakground Productions
How do you co-write a play? What does that look like?
Co-writing a play is a very vulnerable process. Before we began co-writing, we had lots of discussions about values, how much of our personal stories we wanted to commit and share, what our boundaries are, things like that. Our initial creative collaborations were exploratory, ranging from activities like examining circuit boards, to talking about programming, artificial intelligence, biomimicry, science-fiction and our respective stories and cultures.
Once we started refining the overarching plot and key elements of our characters, we spent a lot of time sharing food together and exploring how the characters might interact by having discussions (as both human and non-human protagonists) about various topics. This revealed a lot, and some of these chats even made it into our final script!
As for writing tools, we primarily collaborated in Google Docs and Zoom, sometimes dividing up scenes or moments to write individually, and other times writing the larger character scenes in a kind of “free flow” banter style. Overall, there’s no rulebook or correct sequence of steps for co-writing a play! It’s part luck (finding the right person to collaborate with) and the rest is trust.
What do you do during rehearsals? How do you collaborate with the wider team?
Rehearsals have been a joy to be part of, and our brilliant director Amy and the team have been really welcoming and open to our offers. In the first week, we focused on locking off the rehearsal script, in response to hearing table reads. We also had Cantonese and Luritja cultural collaborators in the room, and worked with them and the actors to refine, experiment with and rehearse in-language dialogue.
Since then, we have mostly handed the creation process over to the team. But it’s been a real gift witnessing Amy’s processes and they’ve worked collaboratively with actors on script analysis, choosing key moments, exploring subtext and staging memorable images.
We’ve loved observing the designers at work too, and chatting to them and Amy about how their choices will shape the page-to-stage process. Sometimes this involved making tweaks to the script, as slight dramaturgical shifts and/or clarity emerged from discussions.
And, of course, we’ve played ‘keepy uppy ball’ with the entire team - a ball game that’s sparked fierce collective investment in working as one! A real trademark vibe of the rehearsal process.
Directorial Secondment (VCA) Fini Liu, Director Amy Sole and actors Jing-Xuan Chan, Kristie Nguy and Ari Maza Long in rehearsal. Photo: Tiffany Garvie
What do you hope audiences take away from seeing your play?
We know the audience is familiar with robots, artificial intelligence, and sci-fi and that they will be bringing all these expectations to the play. We hope that The Robot Dog gently deconstructs some of these ideas to help our audience further question the real world implications presented in this work. A lot of times when we see the future represented in media, it’s focused on how it might look, all the ways in which life might be different, and rarely do we get to see the granularity of life in the future for Aboriginal and Cantonese people, how we might practice our cultures and how technology might change these ancient ceremonies.
We also want our characters to normalise intercultural conversations about topics like racism and grief. We hope the play encourages audiences to consider how they have tough conversations, or put them off, in their own lives. And perhaps they will leave the theatre emboldened to connect more with loved ones and strangers, even if it might be uncomfortable.