undercoat: a parafoxical tale

La Mama Theatre, June 2017
 

Inspired by Nicolai Gogol’s story The Overcoat, and Teolinda Gersão’s story The Red Fox Fur Coat. In Gersão’s fable, a ‘humble bank clerk’ pays for a gorgeous fur coat in instalments, and finds herself transforming. Wearing the coat at last, she drives away from the city, and makes her first leap as a wild animal ‘into the depths of the forest’.

But what happens to this creature if her first, joyous leap is thwarted?

A supernatural tale of encounter with the Australian wilderness, in which the remnant wilderness ‘answers back’ as a provocative chorus of three red foxes.

Undercoat celebrates the splendid versatility of the earth’s most widespread wild carnivore — and the shape-shifting powers of language at large.

director – Bagryana Popov with Alice Darling
writer – Cynthia Troup
with – Caroline Lee, Emma Annand, Jean Goodwin and Maude Davey
set and costume designer – Emily Collett
lighting designer and stage manager – Georgia Rann
sound designer - Elissa Goodrich
project co-ordinator and assistant stage manager - Kelly Harris
production photos - Daisy Noyes

'Emily Collett’s inventive costumes hint at reddish, animal fur and her evocative design uses draped, treelike tubes of sheer fabric lit from within (Lighting, Georgia Rann) and surrounded by scattered, leaf-like detritus.'  
Kate Herbert, Herald Sun