Little Match Girl
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Little Match Girl

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Cabaret performer Meow Meow can’t place an exact date on the first time she read The Little Match Girl. “I’ve always been a fan of the fairy tale,” Meow says. “It’s something from my childhood – I loved fairy tales because they’re so dark.” Meow Meow’s latest theatrical production is a cabaret performance based on The Little Match Girl. While Meow says there will be plenty of singing and dancing during the performance, ultimately the show is intended to focus on the underlying political message of Andersen’s story. “I talk about it as an agit-prop fairy tale,” Meow says. “I think this story is more political than other fairy tales. It’s a condemnation of society, more so than a journey into the woods. It’s much more about society than it is about a particular person,” she says.

Meow was in New York last year when she became re-acquainted with the story. With adult eyes, Meow noticed the latent hallucinogenic aspect of Andersen’s tale and realised it could provide fertile artistic fare for a cabaret performance. Meow had also recently seen a documentary on youth workers working in the Oasis centre in Sydney, an experience that left an indelible mark on her psyche. “I was stricken by how brave the people were,” Meow says. Meow is human, and realises that we all have some way to go before we exercise true compassion. “I’m always aware of my own failures – I’m also trying grappling with the big issues,” she says. “It’s like in the Year of Living Dangerously – you have to deal with what’s right in front of you. But I’m always stricken with how we can behave better.”

With her time split between cabaret performances in Australia, Europe and the United States, Meow has had plenty of time to observe child poverty in different cultural and political environments. “You see parallels with The Little Match Girl all around the world,” Meow says. As we approach the festive season, the difference between the haves and have-nots is even starker. “You walk past things all the day,” Meow says. And it’s that thing of Christmas and New Year being so intense – people have to be joyous, and commercial,” Meow says.

Taking such a delicate and emotional topic as child poverty and imbuing it with the colour and pizzazz of cabaret brings with its own ethical challenges. Meow concedes the balance between comedy and politics isn’t always an easy one to find. “It’s a dark story, but it’s still cabaret and theatre,” Meow says. “I’m definitely aware of the importance of finding the right line between entertainment and being flippant. It’s still essentially a fairy tale – and it’s the fairy tale that’s the vehicle for cabaret.” Always happy to indulge in a healthy dose of self-deprivation, Meow hopes any negative observations will only be in relation to her own performance. “I’m always the butt of my humour – the butt and the bosom, in fact,” she laughs.

For the cabaret performance of The Little Girl, which opens in November at The Malthouse Theatre, Meow has written a series of original tunes, augmented with songs written by her close friend Megan Washington. “It’s absolutely thrilling to have Megan on board to write some songs for the show,” Meow gushes. “But the show is mainly me – I’m on stage for the whole time.”

Meow’s stage performance takes an element of inspiration from the burlesque style. Once restricted to the dimly-lit venues of European cities, burlesque has become an increasingly common form of performance. Meow remains enamoured with burlesque’s exploration of, and challenges to conservative notions of beauty and sexuality; she’s concerned, however, that many contemporary burlesque shows lack the confrontation element that’s critical to the burlesque form. “I’m a little bit torn about the increase in popularity of burlesque,” Meow says. “If it makes people feel good, then that’s good, especially if it broadens peoples’ idea of sexuality and beauty. I’m really into live theatre, but I do find some of what’s being done under the umbrella of burlesque is a bit boring. It’s got to be extreme for me to like it – burlesque is more than floating around with a boa,” Meow laughs.