THE VEGAN TIGRESS
A new play by Claire Parker
Directed by Tracy Collier
Performed by Claire Parker and Edie Campbell
February 18 - March 1
Tickets £15; concs £12
The Bread & Roses Theatre, 68 Clapham Manor Street, London SW4 6DZ
Box Office: 020 8050 3025
A 19th century feminist fairytale writer accidentally summons a ghost. The spirit is the highly-offended mother of the lover the writer spurned years before. The opposing worlds of free spirits and corsets collide...
’Fearless theatre in love with storytelling.’
’The performances are magnificent and the writing sublime.’
’Full of surprises, revelation and humour.’
’Clever and very moving.’
Mary De Morgan was born in London in 1850. Her mother was a spiritualist and her father a mathematician. She was a writer, a woman of independent means, a socialist and an activist. Mary wrote several volumes of fairy tales, tearing up the rule book on expected outcomes for boys, girls and happy ever afters.
She grew up amongst artists and activists in a circle of free-thinking Pre-Raphaelites and was well acquainted with the families of William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and the Rossettis and would frequently read her stories to their children.
Quietly influential for 100 years, this play shines a light on De Morgan and her sublime, subversive stories. Playwright Claire Parker, (Rotten Perfect, When the Cat’s Away) wittily reimagines the moment a tightly-laced and formidable ghost from Mary’s past forces her to re-evaluate her own story as she finds herself on the cusp of a life-changing journey.
Playwright Claire Parker:
‘I’m intrigued by the amorphous quality of narrative and the desire for one’s personal story to stand out from the collective. An almost forgotten writer herself, I love to imagine that Mary De Morgan’s bright intellect sowed seeds in the minds of her eminent male contemporaries whose names and legacies we do still remember. And that, even though she was ahead of her time, she sought to be heard through her fairy tales. It may be impertinent but I love to pluck inspiring women from the past and bring their fascinating stories into the light once more.’
Bread & Roses Theatre talks to Claire Parker
B&R: Can you tell us about the origins of The Vegan Tigress and what inspired you to bring Mary De Morgan’s life and stories to the stage?
Claire Parker: I was immediately captivated by how lively and radically unconventional Mary De Morgan’s imagination was. She was brave and unapologetically outspoken. She wove social and feminist commentary into her subversive, unusual fairytales. So why hadn’t I ever heard of her? I began wondering if, in her older years, she had been satisfied with the slim success of her writing considering the price she seemed to pay to achieve what she did. She was at the bedside of the arts and crafts movement founder and socialist, William Morris, when he died. A man who clearly respected her bright intellect. How many ideas might she have sown in his mind alone?
My playwriting began because I couldn’t find any decent roles for older women. The research I carried out for my first play about actor Ellen Terry revealed many 19th Century female pioneers, artists and activists including Mary De Morgan. Her complex and feisty character and her storytelling legacy simply broke through and demanded to be told.B&R: How did you come to choose the title The Vegan Tigress, and what does it signify in the context of Mary De Morgan’s character and the themes of the play?
CP: The Hair Tree, one of Mary De Morgans fairy tales, is extremely fantastical and multi-layered and contains some quite brutal feminine themes….
