BACKSTAGE AT FRINGE with Sarah Miller | What Lies Beneath

In today's 'Backstage at Fringe', we spoke to Sarah Miller, Writer of What Lies Beneath, which opens on October 14 at Explosives Factory as a part of our Fringe 2025 season.

What Lies Beneath is a retelling of the Persephone and Demeter myths — a sensual, poetic descent into the underworld of the self. Inspired by women's lived experiences of menarche (first bleeding) and menopause (the great pause), this work traverses the sacred thresholds of becoming, unraveling, and returning. Through movement, music, and ancestral voices, it invites us to honour grief, reclaim the body, and reawaken the deep cycles of womanhood and nature. Above ground, the temple has fallen and species slip into extinction. Below, seeds lie forgotten. 

Q: Take us back to the start. When did this show first drop into your head? How did it get to where it is now?

A: This dance of a menstruating daughter, a perimenopausal mother, and grief at our changing relationship was prominent. Grief for the planet too. Sometimes overwhelming grief for the ways in which we are not living in right relationship with the earth and the consequent loss of species, ecosystems and loss of our own deep connection to country, to earth, to life. So, the myth of Demeter losing her daughter really spoke to me as a way to explore grief, and through this to find joy and bodied wisdom.

I have always been interested in mythology and stories have always been important to me. This myth became one of those Golden Threads that helped me navigate perimenopause, and later menopause. I was interested in diving deeper into the mother/daughter relationship through this myth but also the relationship with my inner maiden, and Inner wise woman. I began exploring how I could write this into a play.

Now I am particularly interested in the collaborations that will lift the script into an acoustic, embodied telling. It was important to me to have movement, drumming and sound and I am delighted with the incredible team working on the play.

Q: What will audiences find in your show that they won't find anywhere else in fringe?

A: Singing the dead home! Ecstatic dance with a bee! The spiritual lineage of the frame drum and the sieve! Yes, seeds are powerful. An honouring of menstruation and menopause! And a space to celebrate and grieve.

The Frame Drum- is one of the oldest instruments on the planet. It has deep pan cultural roots to women’s spirituality and adorned cave walls, and temples dating back 8000 years. I would add that the Boonwurrung Women drummed for possibly tens of thousands of years with walert/ possum skin drums (but these don't feature in this play!)

Q: What will surprise audiences about this work?

A: The acoustics are incredible. We mix live drumming, with some death metal, chants in the round in Greek, Italian and English, and birdsong.

You're on a blind date. Nervously, you walk into the bar. Across the smoke and pool tables you see them - there they are. Your exact target audience member, personified. Can you describe them?

If they are in a bar, then its one with music and dancing. They are feeling the pulse of the rhythm, and are called to dance. But then again the music might be too loud and they skadoodle out of there to wander in the night…to gaze at stars, to wonder at the mystery of it all, to sit by a fire and listen. Meanwhile back at the bar someone has grabbed a drum and the people dance in ecstatic rhythms.

Q: What has been the most memorable moment in your process to this point?

A: So many moments but right now I'm so intrigued by the honey dance! Yeah that's going to be powerful.

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What Lies Beneath plays at Explosives Factory from October 14-18. Stay tuned to the Theatre Works Backstage Blog, where we have loads more Backstage at Fringe content on the way!

Click here to get your tickets!