Experimental

Body of Knowledge

A powerful meditation on age and change

Dates 05 - 10 Oct
Time 7:30pm, 6:30pm (90 minutes)
Venues Bowery Theatre

$25.00

Sessions & Tickets

Against a bright pink background, two people sit on the floor with their back to the camera. One lies on their back, knees bent, with their hands holding their head up; the second sitting up straight. Each person's head is slightly tilted toward each other, but their faces are not seen.

In the foreground, two people stand close together under dim theatre lights. They are listening to something on a phone through a shared set of headphones. In the mid-ground, a person is speaking into her phone. In the background, a group of three people stand together in a discussion.

Experimental

Image Credit: Pier Carthew

Directed by: Samara Hersch
Presented by: Melbourne Fringe
In Association with: Creative Brimbank

This intimate and playful work, performed by teenagers who call into the theatre on mobile phones, is a powerful meditation on age and change: changes to bodies, changes in attitude, and changes to life.

Questions of boundaries, sexuality, pleasure, shame, pain, consent, ageing, grief, and death are all on the table as teens chat with the audience in real time from their bedrooms.

The intergenerational conversations that are set in motion forces us to rethink the multitude of ways in which knowledge is produced, acquired and shared. Power is re-organised and re-imagined. The teacher and the student, the adult and the child, the performer and the audience, begin to shift and entangle.

Together we are here, in this moment, trying to work it all out...

Body of Knowledge is a surprising, curious, and tender experience exploring how we pay attention (or not) to our own and others’ bodies existing across generations.

Associate Artist: Cass Fumi
Technical Manager: Tilman Robinson

Co-Programmed as part of Melbourne International Games Week

This project received Cash to Create through the Fringe Fund.

About Samara Hersch

Samara Hersch is an artist and theatre director working between Europe, Australia and Asia. Her practice investigates the encounter between contemporary performance and community engagement and her research explores intimacy as a political act, imagining different modalities that can be inhabited by non-professional performers and the public together. Samara received the prestigious Caroline Neuber Scholarship in Leipzig in 2023 and is part of the EU Network; ACT; Art Climate Transition. She completed her Masters at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam in 2019.

Samara's work Dybbuks won the Music Theatre Now award in Rotterdam 2021, Her work together with Lara Thoms and 7 youth activists; 'We All Know What's Happening' won the Green Room Award for Best Contemporary and Experimental Performance and the ZKB Jury Prize and Audience Prize at Zurich's Theatre Spektakel. Samara recently performed her work with seniors ' Sex and Death and the Internet' at Milano Triennale.

Samara acknowledges that her practice has been developed and presented on the lands of the Kulin Nation whose sovereignty has never been ceded and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

creativebrimbank.com.au

Duration: 90 minutes
Event Accessibility: Blind or Low Vision Rating: Partially Accessible
Age suitability: R18+
Event warnings: Moderate Coarse Language, High Level Of Audience Participation.
Content warnings: Sexual References, Body Of Knowledge Involves Teenagers Having Conversations With The Audience, So Content Will Subtly Change Each Performance Depending On The Nature Of The Conversation..

By purchasing a ticket you consent to Melbourne Fringe sharing your email address with the artists upon booking. The artists will then send a email in advance of the performance with a small request. Please make sure to look out for this email (including in your junk folder!).

Bowery Theatre
St Albans Community Centre, 33 Princess St St Albans, VIC, 3021

Wheelchair Access

Bowery Theatre is wheelchair accessible.

Assistive Hearing

Bowery Theatre is hearing loop accessible. Please advise of access requirement when buying tickets.

View an access video here: https://creativebrimbank.com.au/access

Get directions See all events at this venue See detailed venue & access information

Full: $25.00
Concession: $22.00

“Hersch’s art is powerful, visceral, and profoundly imaginative... she engages with universal topics in a transcendent and moving manner.” – The Theatre Times

Sessions: In Person Events

A single $5.50 transaction fee applies to your booking.

Date	Time	Venue
Saturday, 05 October 2024	7:30pm	Bowery Theatre	Get Tickets
Sunday, 06 October 2024	7:30pm	Bowery Theatre	Get Tickets
Tuesday, 08 October 2024	7:30pm	Bowery Theatre	Get Tickets
Wednesday, 09 October 2024	7:30pm	Bowery Theatre	Get Tickets
Thursday, 10 October 2024	6:30pm	Bowery Theatre	Get Tickets