Dreamgirls meets Sister Act, meets Mean Girls…
Nun the Wiser is a performance about nuns, but also about queer joy, queer love and women's right to be heard in a society that often wants to keep them hidden in a convent.
It is a performance about nuns who write their own music, tell their own stories and are openly and unashamedly themselves. Inspired by true stories about musical convents and nuns who fought to be heard, this performance is set in 18th-century Italy and features a cameo appearance by the famous musician Antonio Vivaldi.
It is a satirical look at a fantasized past in which Italian nuns sing gospel music and dream of fame. The performance focuses on the lives of seven musical nuns. On the surface, they seem pious and ordinary, but beneath that façade lies a world of interpersonal relationships, conflicts, love and repressed emotions. Within the convent, the only permitted form of artistic expression is composing and performing religious music.
Using her extensive work on the music of the 17th and 18th centuries, and her experiences in an all-girls education system, Kat has used the genre of the musical to explore LGBTQIA+ issues and to paint a picture of femininity that is both funny and challenging. The nuns in the story are first and foremost people with their own dreams, lives and problems.
The musical explores themes such as sexual identity, living in a patriarchal society and the love of music, viewed through the absurd lens of nuns in an 18th-century convent.
