What does it mean to be a female beast? 

Little Red Hands was a devised adaptation of Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’. Inspired by both Carter’s radical feminist morale and the line from Neil Jordan’s movie adaptation ‘If there’s a beast in men, it meets it’s match in woman’, the adaptation toiled with the twisted battle between the patriarchy and a vengeful matriarchy.  Little Red Hands investigated the primal hunger for supremacy over another, no matter the means or gender.  

Our Red Riding Hood protagonist embarked on an empowerment journey taken too far, escaping an abusive male beast by meeting a curious creature who entices her into the way of the female wolf. Red’s meeting with the she-wolf inspires her to shape-shift into her own wolven traits and fatally bite the male hand that feeds her. 

Provoked by Carter’s original ending of ‘she knew she was nobody’s meat’, the piece explored not only the horror of a corrupt patriarchy, but also giving in to one’s animalistic desires and instincts. The devised result played with elements of surrealism and theatre of cruelty, honouring Carter’s original themes of gothic fairytale horror. The audience was placed inside a cage while the actors moved around the space and the wolves tantalised them.

She-wolves dripping in blood, sharp teeth, knives and being lost in the forest… Little Red Hands embraced the grotesque, bizarre and dreaminess of a very grimm fairytale.

Devised collaboration made by Caitlin Duff, Simran Giria, Gretel Sharp and Mudit Dhami. 

Direction & Lighting by Simran Giria
Costume & Dramaturgy by Gretel Sharp
Sound by Caitlin Duff