Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster

Theatre

This performance work at Port Adelaide’s Waterside is a modern fairytale about a man a woman and a duck – and much more besides.

Thursday November 26, 2015 Comments

Comments Print article

Nicola Gunn is no sitting duck when it comes to discussing the human condition while simultaneously dancing the equivalent of a cross-country marathon in her one-woman show.

Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster was developed by Gunn in response to the dilemma she found herself in while running along a canal in Ghent, Belgium, where she came across a man with two children throwing stones at a duck.

Incorporating a seemingly free-associative text with subversive humour, she manages to intersperse explorations of human morality with her own version of trivial pursuit. It runs the gamut from snippets about Hercule Poirot, heart surgery, Peter Singer, Hitler and vegetarianism, to Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, who believed marionettes were a viable alternative to actors.

Jo Lloyd’s brilliant choreography evokes the raw energy of Vaslav Nijinsky’s controversial ballet The Rite of Spring, with snapshots from the Russian story ballet Swan Lake and its predecessor, Fokine’s The Dying Swan.

Anna Pavlova’s famous death scene in The Dying Swan is given a humorous makeover by Lloyd as Gunn muses on death beds and vulnerability.

The starkness of an all-white set, simple costume and synthesised electro-pop from the ghetto blaster transforms into a dramatic finale of dazzling lasers and swelling music as Gunn dons an elaborate cloak-of-many-colours (designed by Shio Otani) – reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s Ugly Duckling growing into the beautiful swan.

Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster is a modern fairy-tale, a discourse on personal liberation and fragility, and a sardonic look at the rise and/or fall of artists and ducks.

At one point Gunn asks: “Can everyone win?” She certainly has with this production.

Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster is being presented by Vitalstatistix and Mobile States at Waterside in Port Adelaide until November 29.

Make a comment View comment guidelines

Jump to next article

Support local arts journalism

Your support will help us continue the important work of InReview in publishing free professional journalism that celebrates, interrogates and amplifies arts and culture in South Australia.

Donate Here

Comments

Show comments

Will my comment be published? Read the guidelines.

. You are free to republish the text and graphics contained in this article online and in print, on the condition that you follow our republishing guidelines.

You must attribute the author and note prominently that the article was originally published by InReview. You must also inlude a link to InReview. Please note that images are not generally included in this creative commons licence as in most cases we are not the copyright owner. However, if the image has an InReview photographer credit or is marked as “supplied”, you are free to republish it with the appropriate credits.

We recommend you set the canonical link of this content to https://inreview.com.au/inreview/theatre/2015/11/26/piece-for-person-and-ghetto-blaster/ to insure that your SEO is not penalised.

<h1>Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster</h1>

This performance work at Port Adelaide’s Waterside is a modern fairytale about a man a woman and a duck – and much more besides.

																		<address><a href="https://inreview.com.au/contributors/jenny-toune/" class="author">Jenny Toune</a></address>
											
							Nicola Gunn is no sitting duck when it comes to discussing the human condition while simultaneously dancing the equivalent of a cross-country marathon in her one-woman show.
Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster was developed by Gunn in response to the dilemma she found herself in while running along a canal in Ghent, Belgium, where she came across a man with two children throwing stones at a duck.
Incorporating a seemingly free-associative text with subversive humour, she manages to intersperse explorations of human morality with her own version of trivial pursuit. It runs the gamut from snippets about Hercule Poirot, heart surgery, Peter Singer, Hitler and vegetarianism, to Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, who believed marionettes were a viable alternative to actors.
Jo Lloyd’s brilliant choreography evokes the raw energy of Vaslav Nijinsky’s controversial ballet The Rite of Spring, with snapshots from the Russian story ballet Swan Lake and its predecessor, Fokine’s The Dying Swan.
Anna Pavlova’s famous death scene in The Dying Swan is given a humorous makeover by Lloyd as Gunn muses on death beds and vulnerability.
<a href="http://indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Piece-for-Person-and-Ghetto-Blaster-2.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-221389 size-large" src="https://indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Piece-for-Person-and-Ghetto-Blaster-2-1054x720.jpg" alt="Piece-for-Person-and-Ghetto-Blaster-2" width="1054" height="720" /></a>
The starkness of an all-white set, simple costume and synthesised electro-pop from the ghetto blaster transforms into a dramatic finale of dazzling lasers and swelling music as Gunn dons an elaborate cloak-of-many-colours (designed by Shio Otani) – reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s Ugly Duckling growing into the beautiful swan.
Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster is a modern fairy-tale, a discourse on personal liberation and fragility, and a sardonic look at the rise and/or fall of artists and ducks.
At one point Gunn asks: “Can everyone win?” She certainly has with this production.
Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster is being presented by Vitalstatistix and Mobile States at Waterside in Port Adelaide until November 29.
 
							This article is republished from <a href="https://inreview.com.au" target=_blank rel="canonical">InReview</a> under a Creative Commons licence. Read the <a href="https://inreview.com.au/inreview/theatre/2015/11/26/piece-for-person-and-ghetto-blaster/" target=_blank rel="canonical">original article</a>.
							<link href="https://inreview.com.au/inreview/theatre/2015/11/26/piece-for-person-and-ghetto-blaster/" rel="canonical">

<a href="https://inreview.com.au" target="_blank" rel="noopener">InReview</a> is an open access, non-profit arts and culture journalism project. Readers can <a href="https://artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2E9q0000008PVN/inreview-sa-20222023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">support our work with a donation</a>. Subscribe to InReview’s free weekly newsletter <a href="https://inreview.com.au/subscribe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
							<img src="https://inreview.com.au/pixel2.png?cc_article=piece-for-person-and-ghetto-blaster" width="1" height="1">

Copied to Clipboard