Mary Muller – The Secret Suffragette

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The Secret Suffragette tells the story of the composer's great, great grandmother Mary Muller who campaigned for women’s rights in the 1800s. There are six principal roles, six child roles and a chorus in the cast.

"Hers was a great story," says Griffiths. "She fled a violent marriage and met a widower Dr Stephen Muller on the boat coming out to New Zealand in 1849. She became his housekeeper and subsequently married him. Behind his back she took up the feminist cause and under the pseudonym Femina started campaigning for women’s property rights. She was successful too. She never got round to telling her husband about her secret life and he died before she was 'outed'."

New Zealand’s best known women’s rights activist, Kate Sheppard, called Muller "New Zealand’s pioneer suffragist".