In an ordinary street, in an ordinary suburb, in an ordinary town, something is amiss. Its not the maths exam the teens are about to fail, or the overdue essay. Its not global warming or fast-fashion sweatshops. Its a low buzz of anxiety, a quiet terror in the middle of the night. Because girls have been going missing. They have either walked off into the bush to live out some wild fantasy or... or... The adults are not taking any chances. All young women are required to be registered with authorities. And now a high fence is being erected. And now all females under the age of 18 have to wear a tracking device. And now they have to beware what they say or do in case it puts them in mortal danger. They will be controlled, and they will be safe. But like a sliver of glass lodged under a manicured nail, this thought will not leave the girls alone: I am my own person; take me seriously. Morgan Roses little girls alone in the woods is a whip-smart adaptation of The Bacchae that puts a contemporary feminist lens on the Greek legend of Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility, festivity, theatre and ritual madness. It dares us to go into the woods and seek out what knowledge lies beyond the border of respectability and rules. What worlds await us? Maybe if I was older. Maybe if I was larger. Or smaller, or prettier, or uglier, or gruffer. Maybe if I was something else I would feel like I existed. Like I could say something and people would turn their heads because they heard it and believed it.
Morgan Rose is a playwright and performance maker originally from New Orleans in the United States, who currently lives in Melbourne. She has studied with SITI Company (NYC, USA), Pacific Performance Project (Seattle, USA), Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre (Brisbane, Australia), and Dairakudakan (Hakuba, Japan). She completed a Master of Writing for Performance at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2013 under Raimondo Cortese. From 2006 2010 she was co-founder and co-artistic director of the Seattle-based theatre company Two Hours Traffic. She is currently the resident writer at Riot Stage, a Melbourne theatre company that devises new work with teenagers. She is co-founder of the dramaturgy initiative Lonely Company, a company that gives one-on-one assistance to playwrights during the often unsupported first stages of creating new work. She worked with Playwriting Australia as a Dramaturgy Intern in 2014 and took part in the Besen Writers Programme at Malthouse in 2015. Works written for the stage include: Or Forever Hold Your Peace (dramaturg/co-writer, La Boite Indie, 2014), Lord Willing and the Creek Dont Rise (writer, MKA/MTC NEON, 2015), F . (writer, Riot Stage/Poppyseed Festival, 2016), Virgins and Cowboys (writer, Theatre Works 2015, Griffin Independent 2017), and Death Match (writer, Monash / Malthouse, 2017).
