The notion of getting inside the mind of a person is at the core of much theatre, and never more so than in performer-writer Adam Kelly’s case. In a Perth Fringe Festival solo show staged six years ago, Kelly sat alone inside a circle of cards on which were numbered varying degrees of autism spectrum.

His award-winning performance was powerful for its courage and quirky intimacy – Kelly, then 23, invited the audience to stand “somewhere on the spectrum” with him and don blank paper masks to experience his difficulty reading facial expressions. So how does he meet a girl who is more than a friend, and how can he tell?

“Autism itself is really difficult to explain,” Kelly told me back then. “It’s not simply something that affects how I function; it IS how I function, how I am wired. Asking me how autism feels is pretty much like asking a fish if it knows it’s in water.”

Time moves on and arguably (or hopefully), so has the way that ‘disability’ is viewed and discussed. In a short span, even the language has changed. Younger generations talk easily about ‘neurodiversity’, a word that positively embraces novel ways of looking at the world. A viewpoint that seats everyone – including the one formerly stuck in the middle – around the spectrum circle. 

This Perth Festival commission, titled Dragon I, is evidence of that incremental shift, and of Kelly’s own growth as a now 29-year-old professional storyteller. The self-described ‘autistic gentleman’ has moved on, from telling his audience how he thinks to what he thinks about.

Unsurprisingly, Kelly thinks deeply about the things that occupy his generation, from online games and fantasy worlds to the double jeopardy of Artificial Intelligence. And once again, he has a rare perspective to offer – if AI is about modelling ‘normative’ behaviour, then where does someone like him fit in?

The AI theme is explored by a playful-fidgety Kelly on stage, who draws his audience into the dragon-filled but safe realm of his childhood. We are invited to use Dragon I (not AI) to make our own paper-drawn dragon, which an audience member names Kevin. 

‘Awesome sauce!’, responds Kelly, bouncing exuberantly around the shagpile carpet on stage. He  performs with a script in his hands, but more as an aide memoire to get him back on track when his enthusiasm derails him.

Also sharing the spotlight is Jade Del Borrello, playing roles that include an intrusive techno assistant who keeps subverting Kelly’s ideas and ‘completing’ his writing tasks. Del Borrello is a wonderfully versatile performer, switching between Kelly’s onstage fun buddy to that sinister AI presence looming out of a bank of rear screens.

Del Borrello is among a small team who have helped Kelly shape the show, described as a ‘Neuro Bureau’ of ‘five neurodiverse artists and three neurotypical ones.’

Their AI views, expressed in the show’s online brochure, make interesting reading – Del Borrello “has experienced firsthand the damage that generative AI is capable of and has already done, and does not wish to use it for any future endeavours.”

By contrast, the show’s animator and AV editor Jude Macauley has experimented with AI and game design for several years, and “uses AI in her day-to-day work to repair, accelerate, enhance and generate professional content.”

But Kelly’s most important co-creator is James Berlyn, a former performer/dancer and an award-winning WA Youth Theatre Company director who has worked with Kelly for more than a decade.

The pair formed a bond that saw their full-length show Arco tour to Melbourne and Adelaide in early 2023, and to London’s FUSE International Festival where it won the Children and Families Award. Arco is set for another national tour in 2026.

Berlyn deserves special praise as one of few theatre directors who seeks out neurodiversity; his empathetic but rigorous approach to Kelly’s performance means that, for the most part, Dragon I satisfies the audience need for coherent storytelling and Kelly’s need to power up or down.

That he occasionally resorts to reading the lines is a reminder to the rest of us that the Adam Kellys of this world spend exhausting hours every day, in an alien setting, simply trying to ‘keep to the script.’