THEATRE director and writer Julian Hobba doesn’t live in Gungahlin, but it’s obviously made a great impact on him.

Best-known in Canberra for his adaptation of Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby”, Hobba also dreamed up the temporary construction of a Greek Theatre in Civic Square late last year for his Aspen Island Theatre Company.

His new play, “The Slip Lane”, is an independent enterprise – and it’s set in Gungahlin.

“I was living with my dad on a winery past Hall and Gungahlin was my closest point of civilisation,” Hobba says.

“I was struck by being in a place that had emerged within my living memory.”

That consideration of what he calls “these new suburbs, these new places we create” inspired him to write an entirely new play with a very contemporary theme.

For just as Tuggeranong was once our “nappy valley”, so Gungahlin and its new inhabitants, he perceives, “are invested one level with a sense of novelty and optimism”.

On the other hand, when he first went there, all he saw was Woolies in a paddock and his dad in a daggy tracksuit that surfaces in the costuming for “The Slip Lane”.

Flavour-of-the-year digital artist Danny Wild has created a floor-to-ceiling digital realisation of disturbingly familiar locations for the show, bound to get loyal Gungahlinites on edge.

“It’s not necessarily a pejorative look at Gungahlin, he tells “CityNews”.

“It’s a place that could exist on the fringe of any city where it feels like you could be anything you want.

“You might say it is a send-up of country towns, but when Jack Hibberd wrote ‘Dimboola’, people in the real town Dimboola loved it.”

He hopes it will be like that.

In “The Slip Lane”, two people, a woman and a man, have moved there with hopes of self-realisation, but find themselves hopeless and lonely.

Missy, played by Clare Moss, is a single mum with kids, back in Canberra after studying at Stanford. Matthew (Dene Kermond) is a bloke whose girlfriend went off with a hot air balloon operator. They meet in Access Canberra where he’s complaining about an intersection (the slip lane) and she’s in need of TAMS support to help identify a wild creature in the paddock opposite her.

He’s concerned for her safety, but his burgeoning ambitions in the motoring party get in the way and conflict sets in.

Hobba is both director and writer, a dangerous combination some may think.

“I just love working with actors taking on what’s been written, [even if by himself] conceiving it with a different mindset – I wouldn’t want to miss out on that,” he says.

“The Slip Lane”, The Street, July 28-31. Bookings to thestreet.org.au or 6247 1223.