Tale of the Wolf

Presented by Institute of Luck

Performance Times:
Friday 18th Dec – 8:00 pm 
Saturday 19th December – 8:00 pm
Doors open 30 minutes prior to performance start time

Performance Tickets:
General Admission: $35 + booking fee
Concession: $20 + booking fee

Workshop Time:
Saturday 19th December: 10:00 am

Workshop Tickets:
General Admission: $80 + booking fee
Concession: $45 + booking fee

–––––

When I was sixteen, my Mother played me a recording of Jeffery Masson’s The Freud Diaries, about Freud’s suppression of the Seduction Theory, which led Freud to develop his theory of Hysteria. Tale of the wolf reimagines Little Red Riding Hood from a survivor’s point of view. It speaks back to Freud’s theory of Hysteria, through the mouth of the wolf, a mythic figure of transformation that predates psychoanalysis. It tells the story of a woman half human half wolf, set within a fictional history of wolves in Australia. Weaving physical theatre and storytelling, comic domestic anecdotes and fragments of Angela Carter fairy tales, it traces a path through the layers of fabrication that line our colonial history, seeking to reconcile us with our own natures. The performance is a dark, playful act of contemporary myth making, dispelling the shadows that lie between the stories we tell.

Workshop: 

Tale of the Wolf: auto – ethnographic theatre anthropology is a workshop of physical training and performance composition for theatre makers, community collaborators, writers, researchers and more. It shares principles and methods used to develop the performance developed by Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret, and by Institute of Luck. It explores how the seemingly individual aspects of our own experience in theatre might reflect its function in relationship with everyday life. It explores developing questions of auto – ethnographic theatre anthropology, the act of authoring one’s own experience through theatre and performance with Institute of Luck.

Workshop Facilitators: 

Alice Williams is a performance maker, community collaborator and researcher, directing Institute of Luck, a company founded through her auto – ethnographic PhD research with historic company Odin Teatret, interested in how theatre transforms everyday life. Her performances have been programmed by Inner West Council’s Edge Spaces program, PACT, Performance Space, Tamarama Rock Surfers, Brisbane Festival, Arts House, Human Mosaic Festival, supported by local, federal governments and private philanthropy. She directs and facilitates community collaborations, including with Milk Crate Theatre and NIDA Open, and asks herself how theatre anthropology might function in the first person, towards an auto – ethnographic theatre anthropology.

Lucy  Watson (Mads Clove) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans and combines writing, visual art and performance, informed by clowning, creative movement and storytelling. She often presents work as Mads Clove and is interested in expanding and fracturing what we expect of ourselves as humans, so we can feel safe expressing difference. Lucy completed a BA Hons. from Australian National University, and an MA from UNSW Art and Design. Lucy is passionate about the role of art in healing and community. She has worked extensively with people with disability, physical and mental health struggles and complex or traumatic lived experiences, and through her own lived experience feels connection and community within these groups.

Performance Credits:

Institute of Luck is a Sydney based theatre company interested in theatre that transforms everyday life. It developed through Potluck peer exchange and professional development workshops 2021 supported by Inner West Council. The company has initiated Green Machine, based on a story written during a relapse scare of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma about a monstrous plant that invades the home of a lovely couple, Supported by Inner West Council, presented community and creative workshops with Riverside Theatres, Bill Crews’ Foundation, developed and presented Tale of the Wolf, including in residence at Rex Cramphorn Studios 2026.

Jaime Petersen is a lighting designer and operator currently working at Sydney Opera House. She is a University of Wollongong alumni, she has stage managed a wide variety of shows including Relativity (Joining the Dots Theatre Co. and National Theatre of Parramatta), Little Jokes in Times of War (KXT), Come Again (Purple Tape Productions), Sweet Mama (Campbelltown Arts Centre).and production managed for Darlinghurst Theatre Company during the World Pride festival in Sydney as part of this work she managed Rainbow Tree (Fat Fruit), All The Sex I’ve Ever Had (Mammalian Diving Reflex), Gender Euphoria: Mighty Real (Mama Alto & Maude Davey), and Rainbow History Class: Live Show (Rudy Jean Rigg & Hannah McElhinney).

Adeeb Razzouk, dramaturg is a multi-disciplinary artist, youth art worker and emerging intimacy coordinator working on the traditional land of the gadigal people of the Eora nation , Sydney. He graduated with a Bachelor in Theatrical Acting from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus in 2016. Growing up in Aleppo, Syria nurtured his curiosity to discover storytelling mediums using arts and technology.

Lucy Watson (Mads Clove), designer is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans and combines writing, visual art and performance, informed by clowning, creative movement and storytelling. She often presents work as Mads Clove and is interested in expanding and fracturing what we expect of ourselves as humans, so we can feel safe expressing difference. Lucy completed a BA Hons. from Australian National University, and an MA from UNSW Art and Design. Lucy is passionate about the role of art in healing and community. She has worked extensively with people with disability, physical and mental health struggles and complex or traumatic lived experiences, and through her own lived experience feels connection and community within these groups.

Alice Williams is a performance maker, community collaborator and researcher, directing Institute of Luck, a company founded through her auto – ethnographic PhD research with historic company Odin Teatret, interested in how theatre transforms everyday life. Her performances have been programmed by Inner West Council’s Edge Spaces program, PACT, Performance Space, Tamarama Rock Surfers, Brisbane Festival, Arts House, Human Mosaic Festival, supported by local, federal governments and private philanthropy. She directs and facilitates community collaborations, including with Milk Crate Theatre and NIDA Open, and asks herself how theatre anthropology might function in the first person, towards an auto – ethnographic theatre anthropology.

Content Warnings: The performance draws on lived experience, the survivor’s story. It is not an overtly triggering or directly confessional piece, it contextualises experience within broader patterns of culture and myth. Although this is a well-researched adaptation of a fairytale, it does concern trauma. It contains adult themes that can be triggering. Appropriate supports are recommended 1800RESPECT, Lifeline and Beyond Blue.