5 Questions with Vivian Nguyen
Vivian Nguyen is an Asian Australian multidisciplinary artist whose career spans writing, acting and producing. She has collaborated with Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, The Wheeler Centre, Australia Play Transform and Australian Theatre for Young People. Her recognition includes The Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowship for Playwriting, a shortlist at the Patrick White Playwrights Award for Thin Threads, and a longlist for the Bruntwood Prize for Cocaine Bust.
Vivian is under commission with Malthouse Theatre and Footscray Community Arts Centre, with werkaholics set to premiere at Belvoir Theatre’s 25A 2025 Program. Some of her other works include the co-created show The Astonishing Comet Boombox (Melbourne Fringe Judge’s Pick, and part of Summer Nights at The Blue Room Theatre) and a moment to love (Melbourne Fringe). As a performer, she appears in Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar and Phoenix Raei’s Rotten. She is also a board member of Rawcus.
(Still from werkaholics / supplied)
No.1
You’ve written, produced and performed in plays. What draws you to theatre as a form? Further, how has your experience onstage informed your approach as a playwright?
Theatre has living, breathing parameters that force both stagecraft and audience to participate moment to moment. It tests the limits of our imagination and creative vision. Everything in a show is deliberate, every choice is questioned and turned on its head before it’s set, all to help suspend our disbelief.
In all its technical brilliance, there is a mysticism that carries this form on from generation to generation. It’s the magic. We’re captivated by the living breathing humanity we make on stage, and I think that’s what seems to draw me to it again and again.
Having worn many hats in making a show, I have a certain trust in the process and a more forgiving nature to my inner desires to make the perfect show. I often fall short of my idea of my own ideals, so I think the aspiration to ask big questions as a playwright is noble enough as a jumping point. We don’t have to excel by being the best for our voices and stories to be validated. I find it much more interesting seeing what I can create by a more compassionate and open approach. That doesn’t stop me from giving it my all when I can. I want everyone to have a creatively fulfilling experience.
Nothing is off the table until the curtain opens. You do this enough to learn and try not to take the time ‘making’ for granted as a playwright, especially when I’m collaborating with others. Every voice matters.
No.2
Your previous works, such as The Astonishing Comet Boombox, have explored concerns plaguing young people such as our relationships with social media and late capitalism. How was werkaholics conceptualised, and how did the creative process take shape over time?
Before werkaholics, the initial draft was called ‘Workaholics’, written as a monologue of an Asian female retail worker who was in debt she had inherited from her mother. I wrote this back in 2021. The initial draft explored how our inherent attitudes towards money is influenced by our socio-economic situations, and I wanted to challenge the idea of wealth. There was a lot of rage directed to Gina Rinehart, let’s just say that. The draft received feedback including ‘very angry’ and ‘could have more moments of… laughter?’
So the draft was shelved for quite a bit until I was invited to pitch for a commission. When this occurred, I went to buy my camera at JB HiFi where a worker happily shared she was paying off 7 Afterpay payments, and to my surprise, she quickly brushed off my initial shock I couldn’t hide. She reiterated, entertaining my curiosity, that the instalments were for purchases she didn’t need, continuing to blame her doomscrolling on Instagram—another way of saying, ‘it’s just girl things’.
That inspired me into recontextualising the play, focussing on the idea of influencers, particularly around wealth, debt and fame. [I wanted to] explore the conundrums of the modern woman. Influencers are aspirational, they’re an idealised portrayal of self. As someone who grew up in a low-socioeconomical/working class background, symbols signifying social mobility emerged in my research and I was fascinated. I watched people I know sharing a version of themselves which often was far from the truth. There was something in this that compelled me to write werkaholics in the version it is now.
Over time, I realised the play needed a structure that could capture how we connect online today—fast, fractured, hyperreal. I had to have a dramaturg who was versed in the world of the internet, and Zack Lewin was my person. From there, I brought on Nicole Pingon as the director, who I admired and who had a talent for physical theatre. We worked really hard to make the show and the script mirror our modern world, and audiences will laugh at the familiarity of it all.
No.3
You describe werkaholics as a ‘hyper-pop theatre show’. Tell us a little bit more about what that means.
Hyper-pop to me, especially in werkaholics, is a camp take on femininity that exists in feminine-coded spaces. It’s exaggerating the consumerism driving women’s lives, the stereotypical girly aesthetics associated with objectification, desirability and value dominated by the culture of pop.
As Susan Sontag says in her essay ‘Notes on Camp’:
‘Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’ not a woman, but a ‘woman’. To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.’
The people who are excited about the three-storey Mecca department store are my target audiences.
No.4
Unlike writing a book for example, putting on a play is almost always a group effort. When you set out on a new project, how do you determine who you’d like to collaborate with? What makes an ideal collaborator in your eyes?
It really depends what the work asks for and the person’s sensibilities. I try to prioritise getting people in the room who can offer an interesting perspective, especially for my work. Then I find people with characteristics that I know work for me personally: kindness, openness, playfulness, can be silly and has a rigorous work ethic.
You can never know honestly [until after the fact], but after a lot of experience, you get a knack on finding people who have the energy that can make time feel boundless. That’s what I search for. Making work in this climate is tough: often underfunded, politically charged and personally costly. I have a principle I follow for myself that other people’s ideas are often better than my own. So with all this in mind, it’s important for me to involve people who share similar sentiments about their own process.
Maybe one word can encapsulate my ideal collaborator: passion.
No.5
Who are some playwrights you admire, whether in so-called Australia or elsewhere? What plays have you seen recently which have tackled contemporary issues with heart and verve?
Local playwrights I admire: Michele Lee, Emilie Collyer, Patricia Cornelius, S. Shakthidharan, Chenturan Aran, Merlynn Tong.
Elsewhere: Tarell Alvin McCraney, debbie tucker green, Lucy Kirkwood, Celine Song (her play Endlings is just *chef’s kiss).
Some of these I know personally, so it’s a bias, but I think for the most part I admire continuous ongoing craft. Making one play, that’s great. Making more? That’s inspiring. Wrong Gods at Melbourne Theatre Company is the most recent play I’ve seen and I thought it really tackled the effect of globalisation in an interesting way.
Two shows come to mind (one is more performance art) in the past couple of years too: idk by Force Majeure at Arts House and seven methods of killing kylie jenner by Jasmine Lee-Jones at Malthouse Theatre.
Both shows kept with the times and challenged their own theatre making to create a familiar sense of living within a technological time. The use of the phone, modes of communication and themes that are inherent within a social media platform, that is work that will make new audiences pay attention. That’s the work that will bring in new audiences.
(Vivian Nguyen / supplied)
Find Out More
Australia’s latest it-girl, Lilian, and her struggling actor best friend, Jillian, thrive on clean-girl aesthetics and dreams of stardom. But when cultural zeitgeist icon Unmoi threatens Lilian’s Instagram empire, she finds herself on the brink of cancel culture. With Jillian by her side, it’s them and manifestation versus the world—or so Lilian thinks.
werkaholics by Vivian Nguyen is a bold exploration of influencer culture, intersectional feminism, and the unfiltered truths about our evolving relationship with money, whiteness, and liberation in 21st-century capitalism. A hyper-pop interrogation of modern conundrums, it’s an absurdist and comedic take on digital hysteria.
As Lilian and Jillian navigate the ruthless demands of digital fame, mounting debt, and a shifting social landscape, Lilian is forced to decide what matters most: her dreams of fame or her best friend?
werkaholics opens at Belvoir Theatre on 29 July and runs till 17 August. More info here.