Carmilla: A ghost story for theatre

In the hills of Styria, in the 19th Century, a chance encounter threatens to change Laura’s life forever. Lonely and sheltered, she is desperate for a companion, and her prayers are answered when the strange and lovely Carmilla tumbles onto her doorstep. The two girls form a bond, inextricable from one another – even, perhaps, in the face of undeath…

Based on the 1872 novel by Sheridan Le Fanu, this story has long been interpreted as a tale of innocence lost. This feminist retelling, accompanied by an operatic score composed by Melbourne University alum Adam Yee, focuses on the love and beauty in sapphic relationships, and acts as a salve for any kind of woman who has felt the world does not understand her. More than a play; this is a journey through the intertextuality of music and melodrama.

Producer and director Heenal Shah likes to think of herself as a bit of a creative jack-of-all-trades. Her love for theatre began young, in the Year 5 school panto, and has continued ever since. Taking on a variety of performance, directing, and lighting director roles during school and university allowed to pursue her future career. Acting as director and producer for two successful musical runs with Independence Productions in 2020 and 2021, Heenal went on to define her managerial and wider creative visions by acting as Speakers’ Officer for the Cambridge University Film Association, and inviting industry professionals with credits including House of the Dragon, Good Omens and Queer. Having graduated, she is hoping to realise a lush, sympathetic, opulent, and vivid production with Carmilla, before making her foray back into film and television. Her creative inspirations often lead to pieces inspired heavily by the magic of music: a focus on cadence, rhythm, musicality, and dance-like movement feature in much of her work. With a background as a historian, she is particularly interested in period and historical fiction, and the mirror that a familiar story placed in an unfamiliar environment can present. This production of Carmilla aims to hold a mirror to current perceptions of ‘demonic’ and ‘innocent’ women in media: the way they are characterised and their gender performed for the patriarchal gaze, and interrogates what any of those things really mean.

Writer, co-producer, and Assistant Director Eliza Mardlin has worked as a musical theatre director since 2020, starting as an assistant director at her university’s MT society but quickly being promoted to full-time director, a position she then held for another academic year. In the summer of 2020 she starred in Independence Productions’ performance of ‘The Trail to Oregon’, which was co-directed by her Carmilla partner-in-crime, Heenal Shah. She performed in the following year’s show, then pivoted back to directing, acting as assistant director for the company’s next two shows: ‘The Lightning Thief’ and ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. She took a year off for personal reasons but returned this summer to co-direct again. Carmilla will be her first foray into theatre producing, and also her first non-musical. She is a big fan of vampire media and loves the adaptation process, so working on a stage adaptation of the first vampire novel is the culmination of her interests and goals.

Musical Director Bogdan Skrypka is a London-based pianist, percussionist and conductor whose artistic voice blends a deep love of Romantic expression with a rhythmic instinct shaped by jazz, funk and West African music. He is the founder and conductor of the Willow Orchestra, an ensemble comprised of top conservatoire students and recent graduates performing since 2023, known for championing emerging soloists and crafting imaginative, well-balanced programmes. Bogdan is always most excited when conducting chamber forces, where every texture is revealed, every musician is fully connected, and the most intimate music-making can unfold without the scale of a symphony orchestra pulling focus. Carmilla marks his first collaboration with drama in an operatic setting, and as someone who genuinely loves the weird and wonderful, this is the perfect next adventure.

Composer Adam Yee’s music has been performed by the Libra and ELISION ensembles, featured in festivals such as Next Wave and the Melbourne International Festival, and he has been the recipient of numerous awards.