The Little Mermaid

A small scale ballet

The youngest son in a mobility aid-using family runs away from his Mandurah home, looking for the love he deserves on land in the alluring but emotionally distant white Prince. 

Reimagined as a modern ballet about local lives, The Little Mermaid reckons with the power and fragility of love and growth on the margins. 

Made with care by a disabled-led team of underrepresented theatre, dance and music collaborators – this ballet bravely defies conventions, merging neo-classical aesthetics with realism through Patrick Gunasekera’s nuanced and compellingly human choreography. 

Performed to a complex recorded score by local composers Tiffany Ha, Ben Buchanan and Rebecca Riggs-Bennett, this coming-of age shimmers with adolescence’s brilliant and bitter triumphs of surviving amidst invisibility 

• Choreographer / Producer

  Patrick Gunasekera

• Director

  Jules Burton

• Intimacy Director

  Rhiannon Bryan

• Production Manager

  Emmett Aster

• Stage Manager

  Isobel Chard

• Composer / Pianist

  Tiffany Ha

• Composer / Cellist

  Ben Buchanan

• Electronic Music Producer / Sound Designer

  Rebecca Riggs-Bennett

• Dramaturg

  Ari Rahim

• Lighting Designer

  Matthew Erren

• Blind Cultural Consultant

  Grace King

• Performer – “The Little Mermaid”

  Patrick Gunasekera

• Performer – “The Middle Mermaid”

  Dorian Murphy

• Performer – “The Sea Queen”

  Rayna Lamb

• Performer – “The Sea Witch” and “The Ambassador”

  Reese Horne

• Performer – “The Prince”

  Octavia Hall

• Performer – “The Theologian”

  Alison Evans

• Performer – “The Captain”

  Ev Snook

• Choreography Mentor

  Kim Balfour