Research Seminar - "Questions" - A.I. 'Morphology' and Labour in Blade Runner (Parker) and There’s Something About Autism: a case study in autistic dramaturgy in playwriting (Wilson)

"Questions" - A.I. 'Morphology' and Labour in Blade Runner (Parker) and There’s Something About Autism: a case study in autistic dramaturgy in playwriting (Wilson)

Presented by: Talia Parker and Sarah Wilson

Date: Friday 25 September 2026
Time: 12-1pm
Location: Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)

Presenter 1: Talia Parker

Title: "Questions" - A.I. 'Morphology' and Labour in Blade Runner

Abstract:

In the theatrical cut of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), an ad selling ‘Replicants’ invites customers to:

“Use your new friend as a personal body servant, or a tireless field-hand. The custom-tailored,

genetically engineered, humanoid Replicant, designed especially for your needs…”

The selling point for Replicants, then, is their ability to labour. But this advert begs a question: what actually is a Replicant? What is the nature of this thing, designed to perform labour for human benefit? And how should the viewer feel about them?

This presentation investigates Replicant "morphology", the study of forms and organisms. It takes its title from what the Replicant leader Roy Batty wants to know about himself - "morphology, longevity, incept dates."

Using textual analysis of two scenes, one from Blade Runner and one from Denis Villeneuve's sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (2017), this presentation considers what the films reveal about how Replicants are made, how the critical literature about the films characterises them, and the stated reasons why they are made in their particular form. It is argued that the Replicants take the form of embodied, organic human-like beings, who are forced to labour under an oppressive work system. This situation creates conditions that can elicit a viewer's sympathy. 

Scholarship has substantiated a connection between fictional representations of artificial intelligence technologies, and real-world perceptions of that technology. In understanding what Replicants 'are', we can disentangle what they are not, and what lessons we can learn from these differences. 

Bio: Talia Parker is a Master of Philosophy candidate and casual academic tutor in Film and Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on portrayals of artificial intelligence technology in science fiction films. Her thesis, "Empathy Machines: Work, Sympathy, and Artificial Intelligence in the Blade Runner Films", analyses how viewers are prompted to feel sympathy for Replicants through their evolution beyond the work and labour they were designed to perform. 

Presenter 2: Sarah Wilson

Title: There’s Something About Autism: a case study in autistic dramaturgy in playwriting

Abstract:

My model of autistic dramaturgy for playwrights, as formalised in my 2023 article “Our Own Time and Space: Locating Autistic Poetics in Theatre”, draws on the autistic poetics — ricochet, apostrophe, ejaculation, discretion, and invention — proposed by neuroqueer literature scholar Julia Miele Rodas in her book Autistic Disturbances. This model recontextualises pathologized autistic communication traits as meaningful aesthetic choices, ultimately creating a dramaturgy (theatrical meaning-making process) that foregrounds and validates autistic communication and cognition. This model was developed in the context of my recently completed practice-led PhD studies, and was applied to my own creative output and practice therein.

There’s Something About Autism: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Stim by Oliver Hetherington-Page is a “reclamation of the romantic comedy” for autistic people and is currently preparing for its premiere production next year at Brisfest. There’s Something About Autism received development and a rehearsed reading as part of Brisbane’s Undercover Arts Festival in 2025 under the title Pretty F**king Autistic, and the play shares the focus on autistic adult relationships and sexuality that defines Hetherington-Page’s body of work.

There’s Something About Autism is the first example I’m aware of where a work slated for professional, mainstream production was written using my autistic dramaturgy model. Taking the play as a case study, I provide examples of the poetics as they manifested in Hetherington-Page’s writing, and analyse the impact of this autistic dramaturgy when alongside the autism content of the text. Ultimately, I argue that instead of writing in a way that segregates explicitly autistic people from general, presumed-allistic theatre audiences, my autistic dramaturgy model supports playwrights in encouraging audiences of all neurotypes to interpret and value autistic communication traits.

Bio:

Sarah Wilson recently completed her PhD studying the role of playwrights in autistic form, representation and accessibility in order to better understand how playwrights can contribute to or dismantle barriers to autistic participation in theatre. Sarah is also an emerging Meanjin-Brisbane-based playwright. Her play How to Say I Love You in Every Possible Imagined Future was shortlisted for the 2025 Queensland Premier’s Drama Award, and she cowrote the ecofeminist work Rising, which was commissioned and produced by Playlab Theatre and debuted in 2021.