the zoey louise moonbeam dawson shakespeare company

MTC NEON Festival of Independent Theatre

May 28 - June 7 2015 

Devised and Directed by Zoey Dawson and Romanie Harper

Performance Text Zoey Dawson
Set and Costume Design Romanie Harper
Lighting Design Emma Valente 
Sound Design James Paul

Assistant Director Leticia Brennan Steers

Producer Jo Porter

Performers Debra Batton, Zoey Dawson and Ivy Rose Miller

Promotional Photography Pier Carthew

Production Photography David Patterson

“I figure, if a girl wants to be a legend, she should just go ahead and be one” – Calamity Jane.

The gun-slinging, foul-mouthed cowgirl Calamity Jane has become a legend of the American Wild West. A spinster, a notorious liar and a violent drunk, she lived and dressed like a man in a protofeminist era - yet in her death, unwitting became a pin-up girl.

In 1953, Calamity’s legend was given the ultimate makeover - a Hollywood musical starring Doris Day as the soft-hearted cowgirl who uses her feminine charm to rope the man of her dreams.

Calamity explores one wild woman with two wildly different stories.

Brought to you by feminist trailblazers The Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company, Calamity looks at the way difficult women are mythologised – often into palatable perkiness. Part musical, part western and part documentary, Calamity speaks to something violent in all of us - the space between who we are, and how we want to be remembered.

"Mocking, self-reflective, surreal... always entertaining. Hilariously mocks the self-mythologising and narcissism of show business, and then turns to a much darker performance that questions the limitations of contemporary feminism. The performance of femininity is presented as an ever-receding hall of mirrors, a vertiginous process of affectless self-alienation." - Alison Croggan, ABC

the zoey louise moonbeam dawson shakespeare company