belloo and critical stages present

ROVERS WEB SERIES

CREATED By Katherine Lyall-Watson & Caroline Dunphy
STARRING roxanne mcdonald & barbara lowing

Roving Women Are Back to Take Over the Internet!

“If I have to pivot any faster I’m going to displace my hip” Barbara Lowing

Roving women are back to take over the internet! Rovers Web Series captures the same spirit, truth, and hilarity as the original stage production, with ‘Aunty Rox and Barb’ unleashed to riff on age, love, and comforts big and small. They even find time for a well-fluffed pigeon and a reminiscent boogie to the Bee Gees.

Watch Rovers Web Series to see the shenanigans these intrepid, fierce and fun artists get up to when they’re left to their own devices.

Episodes:
• Ep 1 – Redcliffe
• Ep 2 – Glasshouse
• Ep 3 – Toowoomba
• Ep 4 – Stradbroke Island

THE STORY BEHIND THE ROVERS WEB SERIES

The original stage production of Rovers, written by Katherine Lyall-Watson, premiered at NORPA in Lismore before featuring at the Brisbane Festival in 2018. Developed from interviews with performers Barbara Lowing and Roxanne McDonald about their families and the pioneering women in their lives, the work became a heart-warming and fast-paced ode to Australia — and to the adventurous, imaginative women she inspires.

Co-created with two of Australia’s most revered performers — First Nations artist Roxanne McDonald and non–First Nations artist Barbara Lowing — Rovers blends verbatim storytelling, fictive memory, and feminist tropes of the road movie and the “wild woman” archetype. The result is a poetic and dynamic performance that celebrates female resilience while exploring Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal experiences of colonisation, reconciliation, memory, and aging.

In 2020, Critical Stages Touring received Australia Council Playing Australia funding to tour Rovers nationally, with performances planned for Redlands, Maleny, Gladstone, Townsville, Darwin, Alice Springs, Geelong, and Shellharbour. When the tour was disrupted by COVID-19, the creative team pivoted — securing support from Arts Queensland to develop a companion web series that extended the project’s creative research and audience reach.

The Rovers Web Series drew from the original play’s characters, themes, and motifs, reimagining them within a travel documentary framework. Barb and Roxy journeyed back to their ancestral homelands and key regional Queensland locations where their friendship and creative collaboration first began. This process allowed the artists to explore the same ideas of belonging and identity through a new digital lens.

Broadcast nationally by Critical Stages as part of their digital performance program and later acquired by SBS TV and SBS On Demand, the series offered an innovative model for community engagement and digital touring. When Rovers finally returned to the stage in 2021, the digital episodes accompanied the live show — and, in some venues, replaced it — ensuring the work continued to reach audiences despite ongoing disruptions.

Together, the live and digital versions of Rovers have reached tens of thousands of viewers across Australia, expanding its impact and demonstrating the power of digital storytelling to connect audiences with performance in new and meaningful ways.