SWARM

SWARM
Melinda Chapman

SWARM is a full-length play featuring live performance and augmented reality, in development for 2025. Satirical and speculative, Swarm explores the potential impacts of AI and transhumanism on social dynamics. The story portrays a growing division of learning and employment that reaches right into the sphere of an ordinarily conflicted, intergenerational family living in the near future.

For the characters of Swarm, Incredible technologies promise infinite ways to connect and belong. Brain implants allow them to merge the physical world with digital augmentations. Mobile phones are of the past; people access their inner-mind interface to send messages and telecommunicate. Cognitive enhancements offer superhuman abilities that create competitive advantages. As the world habituates to biotechnology and its convenient trappings, the family becomes increasingly drawn into a whirlpool beyond their perception—one of emotion surveillance and perception management. Payment tiers and social credit systems spur a human enhancement race, and a chasm grows between the haves and the have-nots. Within the Swarm family, enduring sibling rivalries erupt.

During the writing phase, it became apparent that on-stage augmented reality is essential for the audience's immersion while they consider the questions driving the work: What could a further destabilised ‘shared reality’ feel like in future? How might society, industry—and self—be contributing? What function does our shared reality play in community-building and sense of belonging?

Swarm has yielded a collaboration of four artists under the name WRITHE, co-founded by Jess Lesosky (choreographer & movement therapist) and myself (project lead and writer). WRITHE also comprises Joshua Mitchell (creative technologist) and Sheshtin Honey (Sound designer and score composer).

Melinda Chapman Bio

Swarm project Lead / Writer

Melinda began her career in the Melbourne advertising industry, designing for clients including RACV, Film Victoria, Nestle, White Wings and many more. In Edinburgh, Scotland, she joined the computer games industry, working in digital art on titles for PC, Playstation, and Xbox, before returning to Australia to work at ATARI Melbourne House. Melinda was selected twice as a global community artist for Electronic Art’s The Sims Game Release Camps in Redwood, California.

Moving to the Surf Coast, Melinda acted, directed, and offered various skills including choreography for Back to Back Theatre’s Hell House and media for Blink Dance Theatre and regional collectives. As an emerging playwright, her debut play, Just Far Enough, is published with Australian Plays Transform, and her follow-up play, Whatever Comes Our Way, was produced with Anglesea Performing Arts. Melinda enrolled with Grace Studios for three years, studying script analysis and acting. In 2019, she joined Platform Arts (Geelong) as a marketing and development manager. In 2024, Melinda co-founded WRITHE, a multi-artform performance collaboration of G21 artists. Drawing from her broad creative and commercial experience, Melinda believes in the fundamental role of meaningful, compelling narratives as a means to process our changing world.