Alice Williams

The Tale of the Wolf is the fictional autobiography of a woman half human, half wolf, set within a fictional history of wolves in Australia that challenges Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality. It reconsiders psychoanalysis, including the famous Wolf – Man case from the point of view of the animal. It weaves comic domestic anecdotes together with fragments of Angela Carter stories. The performance works through the body, dispelling the shadows that lie between the leaves of the stories we tell. The performance weaves physical theatre and storytelling in ways that reflect our changing relationship with biology. It is a darkly twisted tale that seeks to reconcile us with our own natures. The performance considers the way social, historical and cultural forces condition our bodies, in the way an animal is trained by its environment. Speaking from the point of view of the animal allows the mute, brutish aspects of conditioning to find their place among the symbols of mythology, which came before psychoanalysis and persist through it, as languages of transformation. The performance was developed in residency at Odin Teatret in 2017 supervised by Roberta Carreri. It was supported by the Inner West Council’s Edge Spaces program in collaboration with Lucy Watson (Mads Clove) and presented as a work in progress at Teatr Brama’s Human Mosaic festival in 2018 in Goleniow, Poland. The performance has newly developed a second half and will premiere at the Sydney Fringe Festival in 2023.

The Wolf, work in progress showing images courtesy of Tommy Bay, Nordisk Teatrlaboritorium residency 2017