"I can cook my husband's dinner. I can iron my husband's shirt. I can live alone in danger And in drought and dust and dirt. I can grow the food we live on. I can milk a cow or goat. If I'm good enough for that. I know I'm good enough to vote!"
Louisa Lawson was a woman of magnetic personality, a gutsy young bush wife, a pioneering Republican and one of Australia's early feminists. In May 1888, she issued the first edition of The Dawn, the first magazine devoted entirely to women's issues and yes SHE WAS Henry Lawson's mother Australia's most famous writer. This musical began life as a work sponsored by the Grenfell Amateur Dramatic Society and was the centrepiece of the 1994 Henry Lawson festival .It later played a season as a solo musical at the Stables theatre in Sydney under the title Mad Louisa Lawson. It has now been re-written as a musical for clubs and all girl schools. The music is catchy and there is great humour, particularly inside the Mental Asylum where poor Louisa ends up.
"Eat up your prunes. Open your jowls. Eat up your prunes. That's what she howls. Eat up your prunes. Down them in trowels. Three heaped tablespoons for the bowels!" It includes many inspiring songs about the early days of feminism in Australia including 'The Anthem For The Dawn' and 'Song of the Republic'.
Authors
Cast
14 Women or you have have some men in minor roles and chorus.