In this Q&A, we speak to Dr Catherine Fargher about her passion as a scriptwriter, performer and producer and how she inspires her students to share their own stories.
What is your background and what brought you to Macquarie?
Creativity, innovation and collaboration are skills and values that I have learned during my 20+ years of creative industry experience as a scriptwriter/performer and producer. These interests led me to Macquarie, which values industry-based, real-world experiences in learning. This has fuelled my passion for leading in tertiary teaching areas such as student engagement and inclusion and work industry learning.
I love the opportunity to mix with researchers from a wide range of disciplines and I find the academic and social culture at Macquarie really encourages this. I have formed a strong research partnership with Associate Professors Anne Forbes and John De Nobile, from the Macquarie School of Education, working on an interactive laboratory for primary school STEM learning which has attracted NSW state funding. Since 2020, we have researched how student and early career teachers benefit from using the Dr Egg Adventures Laboratory resource to improve science investigation teaching and how students enjoy interacting with the story world. I also collaborate with lecturers from the Department of Computing, including the Games Design major, and with iGEN students and teachers from the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
One of my passions is to pass on real opportunities and connections via professional networks to the next generation of creatives and innovative thinkers. This is evidenced by the Dr Egg Adventures venture at the MQ Incubator hub mentoring over 50 interns from Macquarie University.
How did you originally become interested in your area of research, and what keeps you interested in it?
In 2008 I completed a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong where I developed hybrid and new media performance works from a series of original bio-ethical fables. It was entitled ‘Evolution, Hybridity and Mutation Three Generations of Hybrid Performance Texts from Contemporary Bioethical Fables.’
My creative practice has included scriptwriting, performance, theatre and digital/new-media producing, and I am an AWGIE (Australian Writers’ Guild) award-winning scriptwriter. My scripts have been produced for games, transmedia, radio, puppetry, hybrid performance, theatre and children’s theatre by the Sydney Opera House, Redmoon Theatre Chicago, Dr Egg Digital/Adventure Lab, ABC Radio Airplay, Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Vitalstatistix National Women's Theatre, Sidetrack Performance Group, Death Defying Theatre (now Urban Theatre Projects), and Theatre of the Deaf. I have also performed in cabaret and contemporary performances in Australia, the UK and the US.
My best-known play is Dr Egg and the Man with No Ear, a new media and puppetry production (Sydney Opera House and Redmoon Theatre Chicago) which was adapted from my doctorate. The production received critical acclaim, toured the US and Canada from 2008-2011 and was awarded the 2011 AWGIE for Children’s Theatre.
On the strength of this success, we developed an interactive story world, The Dr Egg Adventures, on a range of digital platforms, including games, stories and an online laboratory. In 2013-14 I received an established writer New Work grant to write the full prose and interactive versions of The Dr Egg Adventures, and in 2015 I travelled to South by Southwest in the US to explore immersive and interactive writing and production methodologies. In 2016 I was awarded a space at the Macquarie University Incubator Hub to develop the digital resources and undertake commercialisation of the first market products for the Dr Egg Adventures books, games and interactive online laboratory. Together with Dr Anne Forbes, we piloted the product in primary schools. To date, approximately 300 students and 30 teachers have tested and used it.
I still get very excited by storytelling in all its forms. I am now specialising not only in scriptwriting, but writing across digital platforms, such as games, interactive storybooks and twine narratives. Dr Intan Paramaditha and I convene the multi-modal storytelling units in MCCALL, and we hope students learn something about the role storytelling has in society, as well as how to do it effectively across all media.
My original degree is a law degree and I am still very interested in the ethical issues in society and culture, including bio-ethics and bio-politics, so I like to tell stories which can have an impact where I can.
Can you tell us more about the MCCALL Masters Storytelling Series and what students have learned from completing the Advanced Storytelling Techniques unit?
Students were able to explore many aspects of storytelling, from linear approaches and Aristotelian principles of beginnings, middles and endings to interactive and convergent storytelling, how to present aspects of stories on non-linear platforms such as an online convergent journalism story which might involve a recorded interview, as well as written content. Digital journalists need to be able to produce, edit and publish in multiple media forms.
Some of the students collaborated with MCCALL PACE interns to create exciting online content from their stories. Our MCCALL Outreach and Engagement leader, Dr Jasna Novak Milic, worked with us to devise a MCCALL social media project - MCCALL Masters Storytelling Project: International Journeys. We engaged a small group of interns who worked with the story creators to convert these story assessments into content. Many students were thrilled to share their work with a broader audience.
Watch some of the stories here.
What do you need to do your best work?
I am happy if I can get a minimum of two mornings a week to write. Also, some physical exercise like swimming, running or gardening to clear my mind. That way I am productive and can write quickly and effectively.
What do people always ask you when they find out what you do for a living?
They ask me to help their kids with their HSC Extension English projects or to read their script!
What is something you’ve read recently that has had an impact on you?
Recently I read Wifedom by Anna Funder. She explores the life of George Orwell’s wife, Eileen. The book quotes what George Orwell wrote about his time in Burma as a soldier. He started to understand that colonisation and racism were a form of theft, and that by belittling others of different class and cultures, it allowed colonisers to steal their wealth and labour. That really stayed with me. It was so insightful but is still happening today.
I’m also researching Indigenous labour history in the Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, where my grandfather built key railway and jetty infrastructure and worked closely with Indigenous teams. Reading Narungga history reveals exactly the same theft by early colonisers. There is much more to understand about colonial/settler mindset of Australia and other British colonies.
A bit about where you live and what you like about it?
I come from Adelaide, which is drier and hotter than NSW, and we used to get desert storms blowing in over summer. Now I live near the coast and there is always a cool, humid breeze. I really love gardening in this different climate.
What would people be surprised to know about you or your work?
A lot of my stories arise from fears or excitement about things such as future scientific developments. When I was pregnant with my son, I was confused and frightened by some of the genetic interventions that were happening, and I think I wrote these fables and stories to make sense of the new science that was being applied. They have resonated with a lot of people, so maybe it’s true what the 16th Century jurist named Vico said, that “fables are the first science.”
What is on your agenda for the remainder of 2024?
I’m going to submit a Learning and Teaching award application and get my marking finished, then I can get some more time for writing.