Cast
Donkey - Courtney Smyth
Dog - Hannah Rule
Cat - Madeline Rintoul
Rooster - Roisin O'Neill
Creatives
Director/Playwright - Emma Sproule
Poet - Naomi Woodward
Composer - Sheridan Killingback
Vocal Coach - Samuel Chilver and Madeline Rintoul
Choreography - Lucy Angell, Katie Bingham, Roisin O'Neill, Madeline Rintoul and Emma Sproule
Crew
Production Management - Katie Bingham and Janet Reid
Stage Manager/Head of Marketing - Kiara Martin-Pico
Costumes - Katie Bingham, Roisin O'Neill, Janet Reid and Emma Sproule
Hair and Make-up - Courtney Smyth, Hannah Rule, Madeline Rintoul, Roisin O'Neill
Synopsis
Talking animals, twisted fables, and cabaret flair—this isn’t the fairy tale you remember.
In true Dionysus Theatre style, The Moral in the Oral: The Town Musicians of Bremen is a theatrical cocktail of cabaret, comedy, poetry and pathos. Set in a moody jazz club somewhere between memory and myth, four unlikely storytellers—the Donkey, Dog, Cat and Rooster—take to the stage. Once discarded by society and now reimagined as jazzy narrators, they reclaim not just their voices, but the stories of every beast that’s ever been caged, tamed, or told to stay quiet.
With nods to The Three Little Pigs, The Billy Goats Gruff, Goldilocks, and other iconic animal tales, this show digs into the oral tradition of storytelling, revealing the deeper meanings (and lost morals) behind the fables we thought we knew. What does it mean to be the "bad guy"? Who gets to tell the story? And what happens when we let the animals speak for themselves?
Blending live performance, movement, music and the magic of the Greek Chorus, Dionysus Theatre creates a genre-bending experience that is as funny as it is fierce. Expect sass, sentiment, and some unexpected truths about the fairy tales we carry with us.
Dionysus Theatre is an amateur collective of neurodivergent, femme, queer, feminists. We proudly recontextualise classic works for a modern world, from our home on the Mornington Peninsula to stages across Melbourne and beyond. Founded in 2012 by award-winning director Emma Sproule, our mission is to make bold, thought-provoking theatre that doesn’t pull punches—just strings, sometimes heartstrings.
Come for the fables. Stay for the jazz. Leave with something to chew on.
Scene Breakdown
'People come here to escape the harsh reality of the world, not to face facts. Humans don’t want to be reminded that the world is shit. That they might be shit. They depend on us to distract them.'
- THE DONKEY TO THE DOG
SECTION ONE: INITIAL SITUATION
We meet The Donkey, The Dog, The Cat and The Rooster from Grimm’s Fairy Tale, ‘The Town Musicians of Bremen’. The Donkey, as the Bremen! club’s Master of Ceremonies, welcomes the audience and leads the troupe as they share their stories of leaving their respective masters and travelling together to Bremen to make it as the musical performers we see in front of us tonight.
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WELCOME TO BREMEN! - Donkey, Dog, Cat & Rooster
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Music by Sheridan Killingback
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Lyrics by Sheridan Killingback & Naomi Woodward
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Choreography by Katie Bingham & Emma Sproule
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SECTION TWO: DISRUPTIVE ELEMENT
The Donkey is reluctantly led even further back down memory lane as The Dog, The Cat and The Rooster explore her story from well before her days on the farm. This becomes a catalytic catharsis for each of the other animals’ stories, not always pleasant memories for them, and not exactly the stories remembered by us.
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DONKEY-SKIN - Dog, Cat & Rooster
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OLD MOTHER HUBBARD - Donkey, Cat & Rooster
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THREE LITTLE KITTENS - Donkey, Dog & Rooster
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LITTLE RED HEN - Donkey, Dog, Cat & Rooster
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All four poems written by Naomi Woodward
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Greek Chorus/German Expressionism/Beatnik-infused movement choreography developed as a result of the workshop led by Lucy Angell
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SECTION THREE: MULTIPLE EVENTS
We get to see characters balance [well, somewhat] their on-stage and off-stage personas through the juxtaposition of stage and dressing room. On stage, the audience learns of exploitation and misrepresentation as the lyrics reshape our understanding of these three stories. Plus, what do the characters show versus what they hide? What does it take to perform for an audience?
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THE THREE BEARS - Cat, Dog & Rooster
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Music by Sheridan Killingback
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Lyrics by Naomi Woodward
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Choreography by Roisin O’Neill & Madeline Rintoul
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THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF - Donkey & Dog
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Music by Sheridan Killingback
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Lyrics by Naomi Woodward
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Choreography by Katie Bingham & Emma Sproule
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THE GRASSHOPPER & THE ANTS - Rooster
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Music by Sheridan Killingback
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Lyrics by Naomi Woodward
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Choreography by Roisin O’Neill
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SECTION FOUR: A RESOLUTION
We are invited to see the rhythm and ritual of the closing up routine, after the audience has bid to leave. We get to see the marriage of closing down yet moving forward. We go home sated, knowing that The Donkey, The Dog, The Cat and The Rooster will be back here, performing for their audience tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. And Ever After. One can only hope that it’s happily. Perhaps one way to ensure this is to pay your artists…
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THE TOWN MUSICIANS OF BREMEN - Donkey, Dog, Cat & Rooster
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Poem by Naomi Woodward
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Jazz underscore by Sheridan Killingback
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"There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats. “And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”
- CARPE JUGULUM, Terry Pratchett [Disworld novel #23]
‘The Town Musicians of Bremen'
- Naomi Woodward
Farm life is no place
for an animal with a soul
and soul music inside their
hearts
Stuck in the rhythm of
pulling shonky carts
when the donkey would
rather be plonky plonky
on the piano
Where there is respect
for an ol' dog howling
the trumpet with
beagle bugle blues
drowning in liquor
not bagged in the river
We left for Bremen to play
late night jazz
in dives where has-been
patrons tapped
butter knives in
time with the cat scatting
nonsense syllables to human ears
To us even a donkey braying
was melodic praying
we had heard of pigs
on farms plotting
a revolution
but for us
improvisation was the key
to making our audience
purr and wag their tails
The rooster became
top cock around the tables
crowing a tune
that was almost a screech
but made the ladies swoon
Each time he puffed his plume
and opened up his beak
they all shut their mouth
to listen to the wordsmith
speak in song
There was dancing some
but mostly everyone
just closed their eyes
and followed our
highway of notes to
wherever we roamed
We weren't robbing them
of art and class
a metronome
just a cat
dog
rooster
and an
ass
throwing
them out a bone
Cast and Crew
Courtney Smyth (she/her)
Courtney is enjoying her return to Dionysus Theatre, having previously performed in Stand and Deliver (Sock & Buskin) during the COVID lockdown – an entirely online experience. While this show marks her debut at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, she’s no stranger to the stage having appeared with a range of musical theatre companies including PLOS, Panorama, Beaumaris Theatre, BATS Theatre, and People’s Playhouse. She has also performed in professional productions with Music Theatre Melbourne and in various cabarets across the city. Offstage, Courtney is a proud and busy mum of three – so you can bet she knows her nursery rhymes inside out!
Hannah Rule (she/her)
Hannah’s previous appearances with Dionysus Theatre includes Marth in Swanry 3.0 as part of Areté Morphed, and as part of the Chorus for The Trojan Women, which was awarded the Victoria Drama League Adjudicator’s Award for the performance of the original musical pieces. She has also performed in many musicals by PLOS Musical Productions including Legally Blonde, Phantom of the Opera and most recently We Will Rock You. Hannah has over 15 years of dance training from Ambitions Performance Dancers, and has vocal lessons with Martine Wengrow. As a pharmaceutical scientist, Hannah works as a Clinical Trials Coordinator. She also fosters kittens for The Lost Dogs Home, and has managed to only keep one of 70+ kittens who have been in her care!
Madeline Rintoul (she/her)
Madeline has performed many times with Dionysus Theatre, previously appearing in Yerma, Othello, The Trojan Women, Macbeth, Lysistrata, Romeo & Juliet, multiple Arete festivals and one Sock & Buskin. She has also performed with STAG (The Winter’s Tale), The Australian Shakespeare Company Bravehearts program (Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors), BUSTCo (Much Ado About Nothing) and Beaumaris Theatre (Peter Pan). She also participates in regular staged readings of Shakespeare plays in the Supreme Court library with Bottled Snail productions. This is her first time performing in the Melbourne Fringe Festival and she has loved the creative process of developing a new work!
Roisin O'Neill (she/her)
Roisin has been immersed in the performing arts for the last 26 years, starting off junior drama and working her way up through the the Children’s Performing Company of Australia in musical theatre studies, which led to her performing in 2011 at The Palms at Crown as a singer for One Night with Elvis. She moved up to productions such as The Producers and Spamalot as an ensemble member with MLOC Productions, Rock of Ages with WMTC as a featured singer as well as Into the Woods and Beauty and the Beast with Aspect Inc as various supporting roles. Recently, she has turned her attention to the classics and some of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays, having worked with the Australian Shakespeare Company’s Graduate Player’s Program, with their 2016 course of Much Ado: The Musical touring all the way to Prague. Roisin’s previous works with Dionysus include ‘Macbeth’, ‘Yerma’ and ‘Trojan Women’ and others, and after a little time away she is happy to return to once again work with a truely creative group of like-minded artists.
Emma Sproule (she/her)
Hailing from Tasmania, Emma has been involved in theatre and performance from a very early age, (of course her early work being mainly lounge room spectaculars for unwitting relatives but the one-woman staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats’ at the age of ten is a particular highlight, you’ve probably already read about it). After living in Brasil for a year, Emma completed a Bachelor of Performing Arts in Theatre; this provided many opportunities, both enriching and challenging. In Melbourne, Emma was the co-director of Shoestring Theatre Company for three years where she directed Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ in 2005, directed ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ with Beaumaris Theatre in 2011 and then established Dionysus Theatre with Eugene Ionesco’s ‘Exit the King’ in 2012. After its inaugural year, Emma continued to direct the company’s annual Mainstage show with ‘Blood Wedding’ (2014), ‘Romeo & Juliet’ (2015), ‘Lysistrata’ (2016), ‘Macbeth’ (2017), and ‘Trojan Women’ (2018 & 2019), as well as establishing the two annual short play festivals ‘Areté’ and ‘Sock & Buskin’. As Artistic Director of the company, Emma has been more focused in recent [and post-Covid} years on supporting others to step into the roles of Mainstage Director and Festival Artistic Directors. That said, the harried and happenstance stumble into writing and producing ‘The Moral in the Oral’ for Melbourne Fringe last year was a delightfully stressful high so she’s committed to making it one of an anthology trio. Welcome to number two in the series as we move seamlessly from The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone to The Donkey, The Dog, The Cat and The Rooster. Seamlessly.
Naomi Woodward (she/her)
Naomi is an ongoing writer/copywriter for the game Masterpieced with Apple Arcade, working in close partnership with artists and illustrators worldwide and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. As a published Australian Children's author, her picture book Moon Sailors (Ford Street Publishing, 2022/Blue Dot Kids Press, 2026) received the South Side Festival Locally Grown Content 2024 Grant for roving marine-based puppetry designed by A Blanck Canvas (Bluey's Big Play/Gabby’s Doll House) and is now touring festivals and is in pre-production for a book-to-stage adaptation. She is the author of the young reader STEM series Wendy, Weather Watcher (Ford Street Publishing, 2025), and her narrative fairytale poetry is an ongoing feature in Melbourne Fringe 'Moral in the Oral' productions.
Sheridan Killingback (she/they)
Sheridan Killingback is a composer from Melbourne who works with vintage synthesisers and classical sounds. She has produced numerous original scores for theatre and independent projects (such as Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Extinction, Dracula), and her previous work with Dionysus has won two awards from the Victorian Drama League for both original musical score composition (Euripides, Trojan Women) and sound design. She composed the music for Moral in the Oral in 2024, and is now back for the latest installation in collaboration with the incredible poetry of Naomi Woodward.
Samuel Chilver (he/him)
Sam, a Monash University graduate made his musical theatre debut in Warragul Theatre Company's Les Miserables. Sam has carried a passion for music from a young age, letting his love of singing carry him through his Musical Performance degree where he gained a deeper understanding of his craft. This is Sam's first foray into the works of Dionysus Theatre Company and has been blown away by the talent of this cast.
Lucy Angell
Lucy Angell is a theatre educator and Laban Movement Studies specialist. She is honoured to contribute to Dionysus Theatre again, having previously choreographed movement sequences and ball routines for ‘Blood Wedding’ [2014] and ‘Romeo & Juliet’ [20215] respectively, and be part of unique and bold storytelling.
Katie Bingham (she/her)
Katie is a Dionysus 'new recruit', however she is no newcomer to performing and all things theatre. A VCA Dance graduate, Katie has performed in forums such as contemporary dance projects funded through Arts Victoria, in the ensemble of Opera Australia, a touring cabaret show in Europe, a variety of amateur musical theatre productions, commercial dance work and has coordinated and performed in fundraising performances for Arts Centre Victoria. She has co-written 3 original school musicals, choreographed many more and created original work for two Australian Premiere musical productions. As a long-time teacher Katie enjoys bringing her creative visions to life and working in teams that support new, young and original works. She is delighted to be working on Bremen with such a talented team and is definitely more Donkey than Rooster
Janet Reid (she/her)
This is Janet's first show with Dionysus Theatre and The Fringe Festival. After seeing Moral in the Oral last year she was so impressed she wanted to get involved!. Usually a performer, she has enjoyed helping behind the scenes, watching these clever, creative women develop this show.
Kiara Martin-Pico (she/they)
Kiara has been involved with Dionysus Theatre Inc. in a technical capacity for several years, beginning as a follow spot operator for Macbeth (2017), where she received a Victorian Drama League Adjudicators Award. She brings extensive experience in event management and digital marketing through her work with Frankston City’s Major Events, Frankston Arts Centre, and Frankston City Libraries. For the past four years, Kiara has proudly served as the Digital Marketing Officer for Frankston’s vibrant arts and culture celebration, South Side Festival. Having completed her Certificate II in Printing and Graphic Arts earlier this year, Kiara has recently been appointed Head of Marketing for Dionysus Theatre and looks forward to contributing in this capacity over the next three years.
Dionysus Theatre acknowledges the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land where we gathered to create our stories, as well as Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people, also of the Kulin Nation, on whose traditional lands this story is shared with you tonight . We acknowledge their sovereignty, their songlines and pay our respects to all First Nations people, their Elders and their children. We embrace and celebrate the oldest culture in the world.