Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster

Nicola Gunn (Australia)

Convulsive, frenzied and downright thrilling, Nicola Gunn’s show is a cocktail of the physical and the cerebral, the athletic and the abstract. There’s a story she wants to tell, of an encounter she once had in a foreign country. Walking by a canal one day, she saw a man throwing stones at a duck and wound up in a nasty confrontation with him. The experience stayed with her, and grew into an idea for a show about morality, culture and the politics of intervention.

A furious thinker and a born entertainer, Gunn leaps and poses onstage while firing off anecdotes, philosophical asides and more. Movement and monologue are the tools here, employed to galvanizing effect. This performer can shake up an audience with the best of them—her work has the verbal density of a great podcast, but it’s a live, physical experience if there ever was one to be had.

Comic genius… Gunn’s text is intricate and often brilliant, full of unpredictable digressions and curious factoids. It’s the verbal equivalent of skimming stones over water.

—The Age

Explore similar shows

• Curators’ Choice Explore similar Curators’ Choice shows
• Talks Explore similar Talks shows