Intrepid Theatre

A story about a man, a woman and a duck and the excruciating realms of human behaviour.

“A couple of years ago I got into a fight with a stranger because he was throwing stones at a sitting duck. She was protecting her eggs. The man’s children were collecting stones for him to throw. I told him what he was doing was unnecessary and could he please stop. He told me to mind my own business, or words to that effect. I was in a foreign country and we did not speak each other’s language. What ensued was an angry, abusive and physical confrontation that achieved nothing: he continued to throw stones at the duck and I walked home to write about it on Facebook.”

Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster is a confrontational muse on peace and conflict, moral relativism and the very function of art, inspired by an incident that actually happened. A woman saw a man throwing stones at a sitting duck and she yelled at him.

What follows is a dissection of the excruciating realms of human behaviour and a navigation of the moral and ethical complexities of intervention. Littered with anecdotes and digressions, critical and philosophical theory, the text is accompanied by a rhythmic electronic soundscape and a non-stop, athletic choreography that shifts from the unnecessary and incongruous to the comic and strangely affecting.

Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster slips across tempos, ideas and performance modes – from theatre to dance to performance art and back again – to challenge how we see art, the world, violence, and each other.

“a moral and physical workout, witty, outright funny, deeply intelligent and, as intended, morally perplexing…” RealTime

“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 

Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster (TRAILER) from Nicola Gunn on Vimeo.

Additional Credits:

Concept, Text, Direction, Performance NICOLA GUNN
Choreography JO LLOYD
Sound Composition and Design KELLY RYALL
AV Design MARTYN COUTTS
Lighting Design NIKLAS PAJANTI
Costume Design & Construction SHIO OTANI
Script Dramaturg JON HAYNES
Production Manager GWEN GILCHRIST
Producer JENNY VILA

Nicola Gunn is running an artist workshop at Intrepid Theatre Club on January 25, Therapy Conversation, Conversation Therapy, a workshop for talking, thinking and doing that uses conversation to generate performative material, using language to shape action. Open to performers, dancers, visual artists and theatre makers who have an interest in working with text. Click here for details.