Fallen
“All locked away, you said, no one can hold it against you once it’s all locked away.”
London, 1848. Six women have been given a second chance. Their pasts behind them, they have been promised a clean slate on the other side of the world, in the new colonies of Australia.
Sealed off from the outside world, they cook, they clean, they sing, they sew – they practice the art of being female while they wait for their new lives to begin. But as the date of departure draws near, the women begin to wonder what reinvention will cost them. What will such promises make them do? And what about the fall yet to come, the tumble down the edge of the world to a far-away continent…
Inspired by the history of Urania Cottage, a home for “fallen” women founded by Charles Dickens, this imaginative new Australian work asks what happens when the promise of a clean slate is built on the suppression of the past.
Fallen was developed with the support of Playwriting Australia and the National Script Workshop 2016. Additional support has come from the City of Maribyrnong, Creative Partnerships Australia and the Australian Cultural Fund, Women in Theatre & Screen (WITS), Victorian College of the Arts, and the Abbotsford Convent Foundation’s Spiritous program.
Available to purchase/license through Australian Plays Transform.
August 15–26 , 2018 / fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Directed by Penny Harpham
Performed by Zoe Boesen, Gemma Bird Matheson, Jing-Xuan Chan, Tahlee Fereday, Artemis Ioannides, and Veronica Thomas
Set and Costume Design by Chloe Greaves
Composition and Sound Design by Clemence Williams
Lighting Design by Rachel Lee
Production Management by Adelaide Harney
Publicity by Eleanor Howlett (Sassy Red PR)
First presented by Sport for Jove Theatre Company & She Said Theatre
April 6–22, 2017/ Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre
Directed by Penny Harpham
Performed by Lucy Goleby, Megan Holloway, Chantelle Jamieson, Abbie-lee Lewis, Moreblessing Maturure, Rebecca Montalti, and Eloise Winestock
Costume Design/ Chloe Greaves
Set Design/ Owen Phillips
Composition & Sound Design/ Raya Slavin
Lighting Design/ Sian James-Holland
Video Design/ Michael Carmody
Stage & Production Manager/ Lillian Hannah U
Assistant Stage Manager/ Kimberley Alexander
Producers/ Anna Kennedy for She Said Theatre & Steven Tait for Sport for Jove Theatre Company
“A work that should advance to bigger stages and audiences… Few works on major Australian stages are asking audiences to consider women on their own terms, in their own words.”
“Silenced stories will out, in some way, and so much of the tension created in this superb production is in the power of the unspoken. We see the workings of the construction of the ideal feminine woman, so dependent on form and lies and silence. ”
Credit: Sarah Walker Photography
“A quiet mystery with depths of emotion and meaning, discoverable under surfaces of restrained tumult.”
“Van Helten successfully gives completely individual and authentic voices to the carefully-crafted characters… The message is a poignant one: The false promise of shiny new lives and fresh starts rarely succeeds in solving society’s problems”