Pigeonhole's Playhouse Creatures is on at the Playhouse before going to Monaco

Canberra's Pigeonhole Theatre will be presenting a special one-night only return performance of its debut production at the Canberra Theatre Centre before taking the play to Monaco.

Aptly enough, April DeAngelis's Playhouse Creatures will be presented at the Playhouse before the 10 cast and crew travel overseas.

Money raised at the performance on Friday, August 11 will go towards funding the trip and the presentation of the play at the 16th Mondial du Theatre, an.international theatre festival, where they will be representing Australia among the 24 countries from five continents there. There will also, she says, be forums, workshops and idea-sharing.

Playhouse Creatures had a critically praised season at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre in 2016 and won Canberra Area Theatre Awards for best ensemble in a play, best director of a play (Jordan Best) and best production of a play. The same cast - Amy Dunham, Emma Wood, Liz Bradley, Karen Vickery, Zoe Priest and Jenna Roberts - has been reunited for this performance and the international production.

Best says the performance in the Playhouse has been condensed, with permission, to an hour to fit in with the festival's scheduling requirements but she has retained its soul. And that's not the only necessary scaling-back that's been done.

"Cynthia Jolley-Rogers is doing a lighting design in place of the set."

But there will also be Anne Kay's costumes and, of course, the cast's performances to convey the characters and their stories. Playhouse Creatures is set in 1669 and deals with the lives of five Restoration actresses after Charles II returned from exile in France and reclaimed the throne, bringing with him an enthusiasm for theatre and a desire for change.

"He didn't want to see men playing female roles; he wanted to see women on stage," Best says - just as he had seen in France.

For the first time, women were able to work as actresses - but it was not a very well-respected profession and they struggled to make a living and to be taken seriously. All the characters are based on real women of the 17th century and the play deals with their personal and professional lives. Among them is Nell Gwynn, the mistress of Charles II.

Best says as a Canberra theatre practitioner getting to put on a production in the Playhouse is something of a dream come true and the company has been very grateful for the support of the Canberra Theatre Centre and the Canberra Labor Club and Ainslie Arts Centre, both of which provided rehearsal space.

Pigeonhole was formed last year by Best, Vickery and Bradley as a company intended to provide more performance opportunities for women in Canberra theatre.

"There are so many incredible actresses in Canberra and so often plays have big casts of men and often struggle to cast them," Best says

The breadth and depth of female talent was driven home when she was casting a production of the all-women Steel Magnolias a few years ago.

"Seventy women auditioned for five roles."

This suggested the need for a company like Pigeonhole. It is not about excluding men - the composer of Playhouse Creatures, Matt Webster, is a man, for example and the company's next production, in September, Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, has a mixed cast including, Best says, "four really beautiful roles for women". But one of its stated aims is to foreground female talent - a challenge in 2017, it seems, as it was in 1669, as is keeping the company going. Best says if enough money is raised beyond the $40,000 or so needed to send the production to Monaco it will be ploughed into Pigeonhole's next show.