Noni Hazlehurst has been a familiar face to Australians for more than 40 years on screens large and small. She has been in movies including Monkey Grip (1982), Fran (1985) and Little Fish (2005) – and won AFI Awards for all of these. She has been in television shows like Better Homes and Gardens, City Homicide and A Place To Call Home as well as doing a long stint as a host of the venerable ABC children's program, Play School.

But she has also had a substantial theatrical career and in her latest role she makes two debuts: it's her first solo stage play and the first time she has performed in the Canberra region. And her role as Christie in Daniel Keene's play Mother will be a departure from the image many fans have of her.

Christie is a homeless woman in her 60s struggling to survive on the streets of Melbourne, though she could be anywhere – and, Hazlehurst says, she is someone who "but for the grace of God, a few bad decisions and different life events", could be any of us.

"She grew up in poverty in the '70s and had a child, and she made some choices that weren't the best choices and suffered the consequences for the rest of her life," Hazlehurst says.

"She is alone, divorced from the world, living in her own world."

While she doesn't want to give away too much about what happens in the play, preferring that audiences discover it for themselves, Hazlehurst says: "It's a plea from the heart, a plea for empathy."

Christie's story is often a harrowing one, as she recalls the people and events that brought her to where she is, but there are some lighter moments, too, Hazlehurst says, and she is keen that the audience empathise with the character's humanity and situation.

She says that too often "people focus on our differences rather than our similarities and one of the roles of the artist is to focus on our similarities – now more than ever".

While the small scale of the production enables it to tour, she is eager to dispel any idea that a one-woman show is some kind of an ego trip and quotes her acting teacher, Larry Moss: "The audience doesn't come to see you. They come to see themselves. It's about story, and you're a part of telling that story."

While that may be true, having a big name like Hazlehurst in a new, serious play like Mother can't hurt its chances at the box office. Director Matt Scholten last directed Hazlehurst in 2012 in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of the British comedy-drama, The Heretic, and says he asked her what she wanted to do next.

"She said she'd never done a one-woman play and a light bulb went on," he says.

Scholten had a long working association with Keene – this is their 12th collaboration. Hazlehurst had met Keene socially and the three of them got together to discuss ideas. It went well and Scholten says he was going to seek grant money for Keene to write something.

"Ten days later he knocked on my door and gave me the play," Scholten says. And it went on pretty much as written – only about four lines were changed , and Keene changed them.

Mother is being produced by Scholten's company If Theatre as a regional touring show. It travelled around Victoria and Tasmania last year to "wonderful response", he says. It won the 2015 Drama Victoria award for Best Performance by a Theatre Company, VCE Drama and was nominated for two Helpmann Awards, for Best Performance by a Female Actor and Best Regional Touring Production.

This year the tour continues in regional NSW and Queensland. This is the first time Scholten has brought a play to Queanbeyan in a theatre career that has lasted more than two decades, so the season at the Q is a debut for him as well.

"We're giving people outside the capital cities the the opportunity to see an artist of Noni's calibre," he says.