The Cat's Paw - some notes from playwright Christine Croyden

The night cats are out on the streets of St Kilda and another bruised and bleeding girl is pushed from a car. She picks herself up and staggers precariously into the dark on her four-inch heels. A mysterious woman offers her help under the gaze of an unlikely angel. A bewildered man crosses her path and struggles to connect with her. Confused and desperate, she’s forgotten everything she wants to remember and can only remember what she wants to forget...

The Cat's Paw premiered in 2009 at the Carlton Courthouse produced by Hoy Polloy with assistance from La Mama. Spotlight Theatre are proud to present this play to an Adelaide audience for the first time.

Some notes from playwright Christine Croyden:

Research background:

 

The Cat’s Paw explores the impact raunch culture is having on young women who are coming of age in a sexualised media saturated society. I began writing this play after I spent time working as a volunteer at the Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda and for Project Respect, where I ran a creative writing classes for women wanting to exit the sex industry. However, the seed was planted long ago when, as a young nurse on night duty in the Emergency Department of the Alfred Hospital I met many young women involved in the sex industry.

 

Research Contribution:

 

What impact is raunch culture having on young women, who are coming of age in a sexualised, media saturated society? And why today, when women have more choices than ever before are so many of them entering the sex industry? There’s no way to analyse such conflicted areas of experience so my response is The Cat’s Paw. An imagined story set in a non-naturalistic world that explores disconnection and self-abuse through one young woman’s experiences as a sex worker. The play ultimately asks what it means to be human and work in the sex industry.

Christine Croyden is a Melbourne-based playwright and author. Her plays include Love your Poison, (La Mama, 2010), A Stranger in Town (Essential Theatre, 2011) and The Fallen Tree (La Mama, 2012) as well as comedies The Snail Killer and Shady Ladies both produced during The Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In 2011 Croyden was awarded the Inaugural Stage and Screen Residency at Varuna to work on her new play, You Never Know. She is the author of two novels for young adults and many short stories published internationally. She currently teaches writing at Victoria University.

Christine Croyden