In Barren Ground, being developed in The Street Theatre's First Seen program, the shipwrecked characters Prospero, Miranda and Ariel are refugees on Christmas Island and Caliban is a local who helps rescue them.

Barren Ground is set between 2010 - when SIEV-221 sank off the coast of Christmas Island and 48 people drowned - and 2018, when the detention centre on the island was closed and refugees were moved to Villawood Detention Centre.

Prospero, Shakespeare's exiled Duke of Milan, a sorcerer, here is an Iranian refugee. He is dumped into a new environment with his daughter Miranda and eventually becomes an administrator in the detention centre - much like, Machalias says, some inmates in Nazi concentration camps were given positions of authority.

Ariel - a spirit and servant to Prospero in Shakespeare's play - becomes another Iranian refugee who delivers a lot of direct monologues to the audience containing media reports and first-hand accounts by refugees

Caliban in Barren Ground becomes a security guard, evoking the experience of Christmas Islanders and the island's occupation by Japanese forces during World War II.

"He's having philosophical issues with it," Machalias explains.

The play explores themes such as forgiveness and redemption through this blending of fact and fiction, the old and the new.

Machalias pitched the idea of Barren Ground to The Street Theatre in December 2018 and wrote it between April and July this year. "It was a short, intense writing period," she says.

Machalias removed Prospero's magical powers - "My style as a playwright is I tend to be quite grounded" - but others involved in the creative process were interested in exploring how this element could be incorporated into the work.

The idea interests her and she's looking forward to how the collaboration brings it to fruition.

"That's the benefit of a creative development - to push you to places where you want to go." The collaborators announced so far are director Nicky Tyndale-Biscoe and actors George Kanaan and William Tran.

"I've done work with The Street previously," Machalias says.

Her play In Loco Parentis, about a sexual assault claim in a university college, was developed in The Street Theatre's Hive program and produced there in 2013. In December 2019 her play People Might Hear You, an adaptation of a book by Robin Klein, underwent a creative development.

She appreciates the way the theatre brings Canberra creative teams together and supports them as they develop the work.

Barren Ground is The Street Theatre's third First Seen creative development in 2020 after Nigel Featherstone's The Story of the Oars and Milk by Dylan Van Den Berg.

As always, audience feedback will be taken into account as part of the First Seen process.

The Street Theatre's arts programs executive assistant Shelly Higgs says working on First Seen ''has opened up a new realm of possibilities this year''.

"We've taken it all online and embraced working remotely, creating a virtual workshop floor from the varied spaces of the creatives working on each project.

"First Seen is still very much about liveness and creativity and shared experience. We're still able to interrogate work with the ultimate goal of making it the best it can be.

"During these times, our practice has had to shift, but ultimately the process is the same; artists coming together to explore, investigate and construct new work.

"If anything, a global pandemic illustrates just how important stories are."