''I'm really chuffed - it's the most prepared script I've ever had.''
When McDougall speaks, she fails to pronounce many consonants.
Her Cockney accent remains thick, despite having lived in New Zealand for 31 years and becoming a citizen last week.
McDougall said the script was built around a murder in Auckland in 1955 - dubbed the jukebox killing - and focused on a ''widgie'' in the middle of it all.
Widgie refers to a youth subculture that existed in New Zealand in the 1950s.
The females were called widgies and the males were bodgies.
''It's a lower working class set of people - they're a bit rough. They were the first group of teenagers after the war to actually be called teenagers.''
Widgies and bodgies listened to ''wild sexy music'' and wore ''flash Harry clothes'' and imported hot rod cars.
The 16-year-old widgie at the centre of the play was seeing two bodgies when one stabbed the other in a Queen St milk bar and was hanged for the crime.
The script includes actual court and newspaper reports and a letter from the bodgie in prison when he was waiting to be executed.
But McDougall wrote the play in a way to ensure those involved with the murder and hanging - living or dead - were respected.
Consequently, a fictitious character Rose was created to protect the identity of the real woman.
Recently, the son of the woman contacted McDougall from Australia after reading about the play in the Otago Daily Times.
He told her he was pleased with the way the play was written to protect the identity of his mother.
McDougall said the family's history was never hers to write about.
''That is their stuff. I've made this a fiction so it is not about her, but a fictional her. I feel really good that I got that contact from him.''
McDougall plans to be in a ''bodgie convoy'' of classic cars driving from a milk bar - the Rob Roy Dairy - to the premiere at Dunedin Public Art Gallery tonight.
