Cedar Grove is a small town that finds itself in the midst of an unfolding tragedy. Young people keep going missing and there is no sign of where they are. We pick up the pieces with a journalist from the local news station as she tries to put the pieces together. With every interview she gets closer and closer to unraveling the mystery. But only one person can release the people from Wonderland and it is up to them to awaken the characters trapped and bring them back up to Cedar Grove.

This original work has been inspired by the colourful stories and characters of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice through the Looking Glass.” It takes the fantastical characters of Wonderland and blends them into a new genre – that of the murder mystery. This work has been created alongside the young people who perform for you today. Therefore, you are not simply watching a group of talented young performers but a group of storytellers with skills that transcend the performance of the play itself.

In this sequel to “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice realises that she is travelling through an inverted world. She recognises that the verses on the pages of the books are written in mirror writing, holds a mirror to one of the poems and reads the reflected verse of the Jabberwocky.  She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land that she has passed into which is later revealed as a dreamscape.

The plays feature princesses who would like to be warriors, pacifist pirates, greedy kings, evil wizards, and a fairy too kind for her own good to name but a few. Goat Track Theatre worked with 120 teenage performers across Scenic Rim and the Gold Coast to create a Children’s Theatre Festival called ‘The Story Box.’ Created with primary school aged children in mind, the festival will feature 26 original works for children that will be performed at Goat Track Theatre’s Black Box Theatre on Tamborine Mountain.

When Paige arrives at Lockhart Girls School, she is struck with the feeling that things are not quite right. Despite, its reputation for being the best finishing school in the Central Highlands, she can’t help but notice that the students and the staff behave in the most peculiar way. When she befriends one of the other students, Annie, her worst suspicions are surpassed. She suddenly realises that she is not in fact a student but a prisoner and she is soon to be turned into a product of ‘The School’.

The Hurst Family Tannery has sat proudly down by the river for more than a hundred years but when Thomas Hurst dies, the business is left to his daughter, Ivy. The town of Braham is sceptical of the ‘out-of-towner’ with her new processes and her new chemicals but she quickly turns the ailing tannery around doubling both the company’s output and the wages of those who work there. Ivy garners the support of the whole town almost overnight. But when a mysterious disease starts to spread throughout the community, tensions begin to boil over, leading Ivy to consider a decision between people and profit.

When his great Aunt Mia passes away, Nathaniel Pemberton, inherits Pemberton Manor, the most impressive mansion in all of Braham. He plans to move into this new accommodation with his family, however things don’t go to plan and the people who arrive in Braham are not the Pembertons but imposters who will stop at nothing to keep their true identities a secret.

Albert, the young master of Pemberton Manor is spoilt, sadistic and self-indulged. In his laziness, he wishes that he could swap lives with one of the good for nothing servants who he refers to only as Girl. Girl, lives the life of an unappreciated, exploited and oppressed servant, beset on all sides by her tyrannical masters and even her fellow servants. She also wishes that she could Switch. When, a magical vagabond mysteriously arrives, in the little town of Braham, both of their wishes are granted. But switching bodies, is not at all what either of them expected it would be. In fact, it’s only just the beginning of this dark and mysterious tale.

When a young woman arrives in the village of Braham, she quickly finds herself shunned by the community and asked to leave. When she refuses to go, the prejudice of the town leads them headlong into a rising atmosphere of accusation, violence and recrimination.

Five girls find themselves isolated in a forest glade in the middle of the night. All of them are strangers. All of them have had the same dream. A dream that involves them being chased through the forest by a pack of wolf like creatures, called Howlers. But tonight’s dream was different. Somehow, they’ve been plucked from their beds and into this dark forest and the only way out is to confront their own darkness. Throughout the night, they share their stories with one another in order to understand how they’ve all found themselves together and more importantly how they might find a way back out of the darkness.

IN 2019, 100 young people came together with Goat Track Theatre to explore concepts pertaining to online addiction. This creative development process led them towards a discussion of how young people’s lives are ‘stolen’ away by technology. This then led them to a creative connection between the modern world of lost children and the mythical world of the Changeling myths of Europe where children were stolen by elves.

Welcome to the Golden Age of Hamelin. The Cheezey Wheezey Cheese factory is going from strength to strength, the dairy is in overdrive and the people are enjoying the spoils of a meteoric rise in the standard of living. The village is heading to the polls and Hamelin’s leading light, Mr Mayor is coasting towards an unimpeded victory at the next election. That is until …. the rats arrive.

Jared is irresponsible, reckless and always in a hurry. And he’s just been given a turbo-charged Commodore for his twentieth birthday. His sister, by contrast, is the local school captain who has just finished year 12 with flying colours. The two of them have next to nothing in common until their father asks Jared to pick up Simone from the after-party of the school formal.

It can be hard for young people to get the balance right in the midst of what sometimes appear to be contradictory messages about risk taking. On the one hand, young people are becoming more and more risk averse and on the other they are exhibiting increasing amounts of negative high-risk behaviours.

GIRL was a co-production with DVPC (Domestic Violence Prevention Centre) on the Gold Coast. It was a project aimed at highlighting the attitudes and behaviors that contribute to domestic violence and more specifically how these attitudes and behaviors are perpetrated by young people from a very young age. 

“I have a secret. There’s a bunyip that lives just down the road from me. It’s ancient. Which means it’s lived there for a long time – before I was born, before my parents were born, before my grandparents or their grand parents, thousands and thousands of years ago. It lives in the lagoon. People like Isabella Taylor don’t believe in the Bunyip. But I don’t care because we know it’s real.”

This project was concerned with mapping the major issues, concerns and stories of young people across the Gold Coast. The result of this process was the identification of six issues that young people thought were taboo and consequently felt were not being dealt with in their lives at school or at home but were of great importance to them.

Cries of the Kalwun finds its title in a cracking story from the Scenic Rim Region. The Kalwun is the Indigenous name for the Albert’s Lyre Bird – a native bird of the timber getting parts of our region. This bird has the uncanny ability to mimic perfectly any voices and sounds it hears with amazing precision.

Birds of a Feather is a street theatre project that started it’s life rather innocently and has landed the company and it’s young actors work in International Festivals across Australia the likes of Woodford Folk Festival and the celebration events held during the 2018 Commonwealth Games.