Careful what you wish for: Robots and burnout
Louise Jiang is most known for her high energy solo, her prolific and growing screen presence, and her love of physical theatre. Seeing Double is her first pen-to-paper play, a story of the world’s youngest self-made billionaire who secretly clones herself to avoid burning out at work.
A graduate from Toi Whakaari on the Bill Guest Scholarship, Louise Jiang (Chinese) is an actor and maker across stage and screen. With a vested interest in devised theatre, her recent theatre work includes ‘Wrest’ with Red Leap Theatre as well as Scenes from a Yellow Peril by Nathan Joe and Ciggy Butts in The Sand (Tupua Tigafua). On screen, Louise features in Sweet Tooth (Netflix), Camp Be Better and Warren's Vortex (TVNZ).
Outside of performing, Louise is expanding her craft this year as an emerging writer and director. After debuting her devised solo show 'actor//android' at Tahi Festival and then Basement Theatre in 2023, 'Seeing Double' will be the first play Louise has written sitting down, with the support of Proudly Asian Theatre as a part of Fresh Off The Page.
Where do you draw inspiration for your project? / Were there particular experiences, ideas, or tensions that inspired this piece?
Maybe as a perfectionist that’s trying to find a trying to practice a middle ground of what’s sustainable; I naturally thought “what would be the extreme of success?” and in a very timely, way not too long ago, the youngest, self-made female billionaire made the headlines — surpassing Taylor Swift — and she was a young Chinese American woman in AI. I was really inspired by her because it was a sort of representation I wasn’t I guess waiting or expecting to see.
Lucy Guo, the youngest, self-made female billionaire at 30 (as of April 2025)
I’m really interested in alternate lives and what happens when we take things to the extreme, especially something that comes up against our natural limits. Myself as an artist if I were to take the form of a venn-diagram, I’m a freelance artist and that overlaps with me also being a child of immigrants. Within that middle section where the two circles overlap I noticed amongst my peers in my community a lot of hustle happens - the same quest for excellence happens, but you’re navigating it in an industry that’s quite boundless and not always within your will or your control. So I think the questions maybe we have as Gen Z or as millennials, are really similar — how do you make a life? How do you consolidate your ambition with living sustainably inside capitalism? And also take into account honour and filial piety and your culture?
I mashed those things together and I was really excited by this world that’s quite new to me - the corporate world and also the tech world, especially the world of startups feels Wolf of Wall Street or something, super high stakes. It felt like a great environment to set a play inside.
What are you hoping to get out of your development reading?
I think the Fresh off the Page development reading is a really exciting place to test with an audience my playwriting voice. Coming from an acting background, I’m often tuned into the voice and the rhythm of the writer whose work I am supporting, and this time being in the writers seat, I’m learning more and being investigating my own voice and how I like stories to unfold. As an artist in Aotearoa, it’s a really cool chance to connect with people and artists I maybe haven’t haven’t connected with before through a separate vessel of work — writing rather than being seen on stage — and that’s really exciting as well.
Louise in Camp Be Better (TVNZ) as ‘Niah’
I’m already experiencing the program just the joys of being a student and understanding how to build worlds through the appreciation of another craft, and I think it really adds to my my kete of tools and grows my appreciation for more aspects of the process of making a play a show or other mediums of storytelling.
What’s one question you have about your own script or story at this point? Or a problem you’re trying to solve?
There’s two areas of exploration and questioning I have one; one is around getting the plot and the climax and the ending to be surprising and dramatic, but satisfying. The other part is; once you have a plot that you want, how do you write it so it’s nice for an actor to play with - I naturally think about that because I’ve been on the other side and I would like to produce dialogue that is layered; contextual, subtextual, that’s muscular. I’m learning that by reading a lot of scripts that I find really exciting, but stuff doesn’t happen overnight - I’m figuring it out.
Poster for actor // android (2023)
What’s one thing you’d like to share about your writing process?
One thing that I’m learning is that me focus can be a muscle. Previous to this program I never believed that I could sit down and write for longer than 20 minutes without getting really testy and fidgety and bored but through this - through tasks like morning pages, through the consistency of writing, even if it’s not very good, it helps me navigate what I don’t want to lean towards. Consistent bits every day (or all the days that you planned for) have helped me build trust and faith in myself in returning to my practice. So anyone can do, even me; who’s someone that has always struggled with writing in school.
What’s one question you have about your own script or story at this point? Or a problem you’re trying to solve?
What are the stages that we are subconsciously aware of with burnout? What are the structures that make up the normalisation of burnout in our respective industries, and what does it take for each unique person to have ambition while living sustainably and leading a fulfilled life? That’s very much in alignment with how I’m observing and testing how I construct my own life, my artistic life, and my holistic wellbeing in general — while being realistic, I’m also having a bit of fun with the idea by putting myself in the shoes of someone in the corporate world, which I consider a more extreme version of work and work-life balance.
actor // android. Photo: Julie Zhu
Something I’ve learned from reading academic texts, plays, and literature is that we’re all gifted with different modes of articulating ourselves. Dancers have great intuition and articulation through their bodies and motion and writers do with their words, so I say that because I’m at the very beginning stages of learning how to articulate myself through writing my perspective on the world and using things I have and sharing that with readers and audiences.
SEE YOU AT THE READING!
Seeing Double by Louise Jiang
Sat 20 June, 7:30pm
TICKETS ARE LIVE!
Louise is supported by dramaturg Nathan Joe (Scenes from a Yellow Peril) and director Batanai Mashingaidze (Dakota of the White Flats), with an incredible cast including Celine Dam (Basmati Bitch), Chye-Ling Huang (Homebound 3.0), Lucy Dawber, Kirana Gaeta and Dennis Zhang.
