Hello My Name Is: No Two Shows Alike

Adelaide audiences with post-festival blues who are yearning for yet more unusual, innovative and fun performance experiences need look no further than Port Adelaide independent theatre company Vitalstatistix and its six-show season of Hello My Name Is.

Granted the Creative Australia Fellowship last year and described by The Age as an “entertainer at the top of her game”, Director/Creator Nicola Gunn’s award-winning performance in Hello My Name Is becomes one that ensures no show is exactly alike.

Audience members are immersed in a theatrical experience in which they are participants in a community workshop called ‘How to Change the World through Social Transformation’. Led by volunteer team leader, Nicola Gunn, the workshop chaotically and hilariously develops ways in which people can, ostensibly, have conversations with strangers.

Created by the genius of Gunn and her company, Sans Hotel, the apparently simple workshop idea is subverted as audience members are prompted to re-think the way in which they connect with others.

The work is surreal in that it begins to slip between parallel worlds; life and work, real and representation, fact and fiction. Is it a workshop or a performance? Hello My Name Is starts out as a performed conversation and transforms into something intricate, sublime and unexpected.

Vitalstatistix Creative Producer, Emma Webb says, “We are thrilled to present this gorgeous show, one that feels so perfectly suited to Vitals, the Waterside Workers Hall and our audiences. Nicola is an incredibly interesting artist and performance-maker; this show is a definite do-not-miss.”

It seems Webb is right about the show; Hello My Name Is has won Best Experimental Performance in the Melbourne Fringe, The Blue Room Theatre Judges’ Award for Outstanding Theatrical Experience and was nominated for a Green Room award for Best Production, all in 2012.

Perhaps the last word should come from the Critics:

“This is an uplifting and effortlessly clever show. Nicola Gunn is an extraordinary comic talent.”- The Age.

“This hilarious, confronting, beautiful and weird show will leave you smiling and feeling so much better for the experience.”  

Lesley Reed

Bookings: http://www.trybooking.com/EJHG

Dates: Six shows only: 2-4 April, 8pm; 5 April, 2pm and 8pm; 6 April, 6pm.Post show Q& A on Thurs 3 April.

Venue: Waterside, 11 Nile Street, Port Adelaide.

Tickets: $30; $25 concession: $22 Fringe Benefits.