WRITER & DIRECTOR
Presented by UQ Drama
The Avalon, May 2025
Adapted and directed by Daniel Lammin, UQ Drama students have reimagined this timeless classic in what is set to be a whimsical, witty, and wonderful night following Alice, seven years old and sassy as hell, down the rabbit hole into a preposterous circus of talking animals, boisterous tea parties and endless rules that never make any damn sense. If this is what it's like to grow up, Alice has some questions.
Pulling directly from Carroll's original novel, Alice's journey comes to life through inventive theatrical trickery and an anarchic sense of humour. It's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as you've never seen it before.
Ensemble
Lani Collins, Percibrey Constance, Zalee Jensen, Jasmine (Lau Wing Yan),
Malcolm, Thomas McKenna, Ellie Muller, Brooklyn-Jade Senhenn & Ashleigh Winter
Creative Team
Daniel Lammin - Adaptor & Director
Eloise Collins - Composer and Musical Director
Lani Collins - Front-of-House Manager
Percibrey Constance - Co-Dramturg and Co-Lighting Designer
Zalee Jensen - Production Manager and Co-Stage Manager
Jasmine (Lau Wing Yan)- Co-Props Designer
Malcolm - Co-Dramaturg
Thomas McKenna - Assistant Director
Ellie Muller - Co-Stage Manager and Sound Designer
Joe Rogers - Co-Lighting Designer
Brooklyn-Jade Senhenn - Choreography and Marketing
Ashleigh Winter - Co-Props Designer, Costume Designer and Assistant Stage Manager
Crew
Emily Anstee, Helen Butler, David Dallaston,
Nathan Habermas, Shirley (Luoyu) Shen,
Elyse Sng, Amber Train, Madeline Webster, Yuqing Xia,
Nancy (Jiahuan) Yu
Directors Notes
Every director has their dream projects. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of mine.
I’ve loved Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece for as long as I can remember. It sits at the back of my mind with everything I do. I’ve read it countless times, read it aloud to my younger siblings, watched numerous adaptations of it, written essays about it, drunkenly yelled about it to people at parties. It isn’t just that it’s a biting and witty piece of satire or that it’s arguably the most important piece of children’s literature. It’s also that it’s stupendously entertaining and outrageously funny. It’s a perfect creation, from beginning to end.
It was these latter reasons that led me to wanting to adapt it, to embrace Carroll’s explosive humour in a way I thought few other adaptations had. This linked with who I saw Alice as, not some empty cypher wandering through a weird and wonderful place, simply reacting to what she saw. That’s not what Carroll wrote. He created a rambunctious, opinionated, driven, fiercely clever seven year old girl, willing to call out stupidity if she saw it. When one of my nieces became seven and I watched the way she barrelled through the world, asserting her existence, I finally fully understood who Alice was. The humour of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland isn’t the whimsy or the nonsense. It’s a seven year old girl turning to us and going, “What the hell is this?”
Staging Alice is an enormous undertaking, especially within the strict parameters I set for this production. At no point has a single one of these nine remarkable, daring and inventive students flinched. They have made this adaptation so much more than I could have ever hoped for, poured so much of themselves and their imaginations into it. There has not been a day working on this production that I haven’t been in awe of them, of what they’ve created. Everything you see on this stage is their creation, their love and passion for both this novel and for the magic of theatre itself. I’m the luckiest director in the world getting to realise one of my dream projects with such a stellar group of young theatre makers. And a special thanks to Eloise Collins, who took my crazy idea for the music in this show, ran with it and spun truly magical, truly unhinged musical gold.
This might not be the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland you expect, but we offer it to you in the spirit of some of the great artists who have come before us - Walt Disney Productions, Jonathan Miller, Jan Švankmajer, Irwin Allen, Helen Oxenbury, Salvador Dali, Mervyn Peake, and most of all, Sir John Tenniel and Lewis Carroll. So many people across the last 161 years have offered their interpretation on this masterpiece. We hope you enjoy our contribution to its legacy.
Poster image by Brooklyn-Jade Senhenn
Poster design by Daniel Lammin
