Shipway kept coming back to the question: who wins? “Are we allowed to tell some stories and not others? Can we tell those stories and live with the differences?”

“We have to be able to have a conversation. The breakdown of discourse in the arts is what worries me at the moment.”

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Her early writing produced her first play, called A Letter for Molly. A homage to three generations of women in her family, it was staged at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre earlier this year.

The breakdown of discourse in the arts is what prompted her to write Senser. Directed and choreographed by Miranda Middleton, the play stars Luisa Scrofani and Adam Noviello, with original music by Jess Newman. The action centres on Ava, who has had a lot of music in her head and doesn’t know what to do with it. Her dad was a jazz musician and when she was a young girl, there was “a great big purge of music”.

It wasn’t one artist, in this particular scenario, that prompted the bans. People in Shipway’s imagined neoliberal world decide it’s better to avoid the risk of causing offence. “It’s a very wild, huge leap, very fantastical. The concept is how far can we take it, what do we lose, what we miss,” she says. “We’re all talking about this at the moment, [I thought] let’s step away from reality and take it 20 years into a terrible world where music has been eradicated because music is cancelled in the name of empathy.”

The world she creates in the play is sumptuous, with a decadence similar to that of Weimar cabaret, which she was drawn to in her studies. The plot has echoes of that time in history, except music is at stake rather than books; images of sheet music being burnt conjure images of the Nazi book burnings in 1933.

“I’m so fascinated by the differences of human nature and I think we can learn from each other but if we’re not even allowed to talk, how are we supposed to do that? We have to be able to have the conversation.”

All music, according to Shipway, is political. “Art is inherently political and a mirror back at the audience or the viewer or the listener. We can reach people quicker with music than any other art form and it can embolden and impassion the masses.”

I wonder if the extremes we’re witnessing in so-called cancel culture are the pendulum swinging and might correct itself. “Everybody talks about the giant pendulum of morality but when I look at history I’m scared at how far it can swing and how violent and aggressive it can get before it settles. The pendulum has a lot of momentum,” she says.

“When morality or a social zeitgeist can shift as fast as a Tiktok video and not over time and conversation over years and years, what are we left with? Who dictates morality and truth? If I can’t question it, am I doing my due diligence as a human being?”

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She worries that this reality is not questioned enough. “Storytelling is important, that’s why I wrote Senser - it’s a dark topic but it’s a really fun, light show, and I really hope that people can watch it, and walk away and remember why music and different cultural opinions are so important.”

Despite Shipway’s work examining dark themes, she says it is “a riotous celebration of music” and focuses our minds on the joy to be had via music and indeed all the arts.

“It really is an immersive experience, we’re playing with all the senses. We really want to transport people to Ava’s world, we want to spend more time escaping than looking at the bleakness of the future. We just want people to dance out the streets of St Kilda.”

Senser is at Theatreworks in Melbourne from September 7-17.

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