She tuned into their perceived sense of entitlement to bring to life characters like Josie's crush, private boys' school captain John Barton, and her school rival, Ivy. When she studied law at the University of Western Australia, Rajan encountered people who she describes as having grown up with 'the right to rule'. 'I've emphasised a little more of the class stuff, which I think got really ushered in in the Howard era,' she says.

Rajan pulled the narrative forward in time to the mid-90s, as John Howard came to power, bringing with him an era of conservative, neoliberal politics, including a focus on the plight of middle-class 'battlers'.

'That was a weird cross-cultural solidarity … I was really zeroing in on the way that women talk to each other, and women in a domestic space talk to each other,' Rajan says. When the cast read the script, they told her that her choices were 'pitch perfect'. Her own understanding of the way some migrants move seamlessly between languages - gained from listening to her mum talk to her aunt - even made it possible for her to 'instinctively' work out which dialogue should be spoken in either English or Italian. “It would be nice if the rhythms of the story didn't feel so familiar to me, but it did, even though my family got here in the mid-00s,” says Rajan. 'Even if it's 2023, some communities are experiencing the same things that Josie is,' she says. Rajan's perspective as a first-generation migrant allowed her to write the play in a way that would resonate with migrant communities who came to Australia more recently.

The book spoke especially to migrant children, and more generally to anyone searching for a sense of belonging. Over the course of the novel, she experiences casual racism and profound loss, as well as first love, while also meeting her father for the first time, and untangling a murky family history. It tells the story of Josephine (Josie) Alibrandi, a Sydney teenager, scholarship student and daughter of a single mother, who is torn between her cultural heritage and her urge to fit in with her mostly white peers at a private Catholic girls' school. Published 30 years ago this month, Melina Marchetta's classic young adult novel is one of Australia's most-loved books, cemented by an award-winning film adaptation in 2000, starring Pia Miranda and Greta Scacchi, and also penned by Marchetta. The role of Josie Alibrandi in the stage show is played by Chanella Macri, an Italian Samoan actor.

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