The Robot Dog is a sci-fi comedy with byte

Technologist Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan was in the process of building a robot dog when he met Roshelle Yee Pui Fong.

In a strange twist of fate, Fong, a multidisciplinary artist, happened to be working on a play that was about a robot dog.

It was, Fong admits, “really weird”.

After stalking each other on Google and having several productive conversations, the pair went on to collaborate on their intercultural sci-fi comedy called, fittingly, The Robot Dog. The play was commissioned and developed through Melbourne Theatre Company’s NEXT STAGE Writers’ Program.  

Set in 2042, the show is a futuristic glimpse into a world hardwired by artificial intelligence, as told through the perspectives of Janelle, a woman of Cantonese heritage, and her partner Harry, of Luritja descent.

As the couple navigate their lives, managing stress, work and relationships alongside their robotic therapy dog and AI-augmented home, the narrative explores how technology can either help or hinder our connection to culture.

Heffernan who is Pintupi-Luritja from Alice Springs, is a graduate of the School of Cybernetics at The Australian National University (ANU).

“Cybernetics definitely helped me think about how I wanted to frame some of the story,” he says.

“Being a science fiction fan meant being familiar with a lot of the tropes, beats and cadences. There has been this very conscious process of asking, ‘this is what we would do in science fiction, how do we tweak that to make it relevant to the story we want to tell?’

“Does it serve our Indigenous and Cantonese characters – because science fiction typically excludes people from our communities’.”

Fong says Heffernan’s ability to see beyond the typical assumptions surrounding AI brought a unique lens to the production.

“It’s been great having Matt push me and our audience to imagine beyond this kind of doom and gloom dystopia because it’s so easy to play to those tropes.

“Often, I would also catch myself reaching for the idea of AI being something cold and metal that might be evil, but actually, what would our audience take away from the play after seeing that?”

While playful at times, The Robot Dog also includes some deliberately tricky moments.

“There is some stuff that is quite confronting,” says Fong.

“I’m sure some will resonate with the audience, but they’ll probably also feel uncomfortable, and maybe that isn’t a bad thing. It’s about not being right all the time and admitting that you don’t know stuff.”

Heffernan says the duo want the audience to walk away with questions.

“That’s a very Genevieve Bell kind of approach to uncovering deeper truths,” he says.

“A few that jump to mind are: what does it mean to practise culture in the future? How does technology change that? What does it mean to be authentic to yourself and your ancestors? And as ancestors, how are we going to transmit these important ideas from our cultures?

“It’s through these yarns and through understanding and conflict that we arrive at solutions. But those solutions should never be static.”

With the play set to premiere in Melbourne in 2025, the artists hope audiences will leave with new understanding of not only AI, but also themselves.

“All of our characters have chunks of me, and there are definitely chunks of my friends, my enemies and institutions and bureaucracies I’ve fought against,” says Heffernan.

“I think the natural reaction might be to see the First Nations character and think that’s me, but it’s not that simple. Ours is, fundamentally, a very human story. I think if you go to the show, you’ll see that there’s a lot more that people have in common with each other than you think.”

The Robot Dog by Roshelle Yee Pui Fong and Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan
Directed by Amy Sole
1 – 19 Mar 20254
Southbank Theatre, The Lawler
www.mtc.com.au/the-robot-dog/
Presented in association with Asia TOPA