AustLit

'Unpack Nicola Gunn’s personal fantasy of being a French actress—despite being categorically not French.

'In a surreal comedic encounter, the aspiring French actress quarrels with a Japanese film director and their interpreter about how to translate a script of a complex mother-daughter relationship to the screen. Their different points of view spiral into riveting and confounding misunderstandings, and the power of who is doing the translating is paramount.

'The Interpreters (Apologia) fuses comedy with awkward attempts to express ourselves and communicate across boundaries. Armed with her signature bold and candid approach, Nicola Gunn (Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster) confronts having your voice translated by others.' (Production summary)

'This complex, funny and subversive new work asks us to imagine a woman who works with children, but has a secret she’s incredibly ashamed of. Now, imagine a man who works with children, but says and does things in private he wouldn’t want made public. Fortunately there are regulations in place to protect children from dark emotions and the vulnerability of reality.'

Source: Melbourne Theatre Company 2018 season.

'Enter the eccentric, charming and mischievous world of creator Nicola Gunn as she navigates the complexities of trying to be a better person in this critically acclaimed new work.

'Are you willing to take part in conflict in order to transform and change the future for the better?

'An incident lasting all of ten minutes is told from three different points of view: a woman is out running and sees a man throwing stones at a sitting duck. What happens next leaves the woman coming to terms with the event and its consequences.

'It dissects the excruciating realms of human behavior in an attempt to navigate the moral and ethical complexities of becoming a better person.

'As acclaimed writer and performer Nicola Gunn recreates scenarios on stage, she will attempt to dissect our motivations for conflict and ask the big question: why can’t we all just get along?' (Production summary)

'A Social Service / should help people, shouldn’t it?

'Featuring Nicola Gunn and David Woods, this smart performance sticks its nose into the gap between rich and poor, and smells something funny. Prepare yourself for an in-your-face look at systems that claim to help the needy, but only help themselves.

'In a send-up of greed, status and the machinations of power, Gunn and Woods take a satirical look at the state of the public housing system, and the developers and bureaucrats who control its future. Questioning who these safety nets are really there to benefit, A Social Service digs at a reality more concerned with replicating itself than improving the situation. When the people at the top have no understanding of ordinary worries, needs or wants, maybe their help is the kind / we’d be better off without.' (Production summary)

'Join Nicola Gunn, as she presents her fictional self as the subject of a fictional retrospective of her fictional work.

An unclassifiable excursion into the gap between woman and myth, Gunn’s work is a dazzling whirl of video, sculpture, illustration, photography, text, audience debate and live performance. With wry humour and a playful sense of the absurd, Gunn transforms an art exhibition into an interdisciplinary free-for-all, where her identity both as a person and an artist is moulded and reshaped before your very eyes.

Immersive and entertaining, 'In Spite of Myself' is a mind-bending exploration of the nebulous line between who we are, who we say we are and who we seem to be.' (Source: Melbourne Festival website)

'In an old shabby hotel, strewn with familiar remnants, a woman pieces together the fragments of a terrible crime she may or may not have committed. In another room a woman is having a bath. And outside a German woman is wandering in the desert.

'A story that moves from sadness to humour, cruelty to tenderness, daylight to twilight.'

Source: Theatre Works program.