MEOW MEOW’S LITTLE MATCH GIRL

A NOTE FROM MEOW FROM THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION:

Can a song change the world? Do we still have any need for fairy tales?  I’m a highly critical optimist. There are thousands of match girls and boys on our streets. Hans Christian Andersen’s agit-prop fairytale of 1845 is horribly contemporary . Whilst constructing a madcap Christmas dance fairytale extravaganza for a New York theatre, I saw a documentary about a Salvation Army-run youth shelter in Sydney called The Oasis. Brecht’s famous Spruch: “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral” - first comes food then comes morality - finds resonance for me with the Salvation Army’s charter of “first soup, then soap, then salvation”.   Andersen captures abuse, exile and abandonment as familiar conditions and food, warmth, love, beauty and spirituality as fundamental human needs, not just wishful hallucinations. Some things cannot be forgotten or un-known, and yet we are now at the point in our world where last week China was discussing the enactment of “good Samaritan laws" to enforce social responsibility...

Flaming in my head I’ve had Austrian artist Irene Andessner’s works on the Edison light-bulb-covered dancer Milli Stubel (1852-1890), Loïe Fuller's experiments with light and shadow, John Donne’s "Nocturnal on St Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day", the women of Bratislavia that Andersen encountered screaming through the burnt city looking for their lost children. Joan of Arc and the Catherine Wheel, Annie Besant, the Bryant and May striking matchgirls of 1888, Moira Shearer and The Red Shoes, Jean Renoir's Tin Soldier, witches at the stake, global warming, "ice" addiction, exploding planets, fragile and naughty pyromaniac children. And always...what can I do? I don’t want to be an angel of history staring helplessly at the debris. I want us to remember to be careful with each other. 

Photo credits: Magnus Hastings, Jeff Busby, Pia Johnson