There’s a farmers’ belief that if a sheepdog kills a sheep, if is tastes fresh blood, that it will always hunger to taste it again – once a killer, always a killer.

SUMMERLAND is a one-woman show created by Daisy Noyes and Dana Miltins. As an aspiring artist Dana takes a commission to paint the outback sheep station SUMMERLAND and full of romantic fervour marries the farmer. Ill equipped for the isolation and disconnection once the reality of her situation settles, she creates a male alter-ego and enters into an online relationship with a young woman searching for her own Prince Charming.

Told from a prison cell and using a personal and confessional style of performance, the woman attempts to untangle her own story to expose her first taste of blood: the moment that sealed her fate.

SUMMERLAND explores gender boundaries and constructions, fantasy vs. reality in the human psyche under duress, and the latent violence that underpins everyday adherence to social norms. It is an extended character sketch in the style of the short story transcribed to the stage and inspired by Australian storytellers Barbara Baynton and Henry Lawson.