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
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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.

Image Credit: Pier Carthew

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.

  • 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

Sponsors

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

Sold Out
 Past Event

Sunday, 06 October 2024

7:30pm

Bowery Theatre

Sold Out
 Past Event

Tuesday, 08 October 2024

7:30pm

Bowery Theatre

Sold Out
 Past Event

Wednesday, 09 October 2024

7:30pm

Bowery Theatre

Sold Out
 Past Event

Thursday, 10 October 2024

6:30pm

Bowery Theatre

Sold Out
 Past Event

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