Dovey's reworking of the fairy tale is the basis for The Tree of Light, one of a triptych of adapted works known as A Concise Compendium of Wonder that Slingsby will perform at the 2026 Adelaide Festival.
Packer invited Dovey and two other writers, Jennifer Mills and Ursula Dubosarsky, to reimagine three classic fairy tales — the Brothers Grimm's Hansel and Gretel, Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant and The Little Match Girl — for a contemporary audience.
He says each of the three original texts share a common theme: humanity's relationship with nature, tapping into Slingsby's interest in the environment and anxiety over "our dissociation from the natural world as humans over a long period of time".
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As far as adaptations go, The Tree of Light is a radical reimagining of Andersen's famous tale.
Packer's brief to Dovey included just one concrete instruction: set the story in the future.
The writer certainly fulfilled the brief, setting her story in a colony on the Moon in 3099.
The agreement was that we would have the freedom to adapt the story however we needed for the theatrical context, which gave us great freedom," Packer says.
"But, also, she gave us the perfect story to adapt."
While the setting is different, Dovey's version shares the same emotional truth as Andersen's tale.