Shaken + Stirred @ The Blaki 2008

This winter at GPAC, warm your imagination and dazzle your senses with Shaken + Stirred @ The Blaki, a series of 4 shows that are a little…left of centre. In the intimate surrounds of the Blakiston Theatre, prepare to get up close and personal with Shaken + Stirred @ The Blaki.

The Needle and the Damage Done is a 70-minute solo comedy/cabaret show, written and performed by stand-up comic, journalist, satirist, radio broadcaster, and deejay Fiona Scott-Norman. Needle is a joyous romp through a top ten of the worst records ever released in the history of the world. Divided into sections which range from ‘White Christian Music’ and ‘I’m Not Racist, But…’ through to ‘Swingin’ Sexism’ and the worst excesses of Australiana, Needle takes you back the good old days before political correctness ruined everything.

Glow is an illuminating choreographic essay by Chunky Move Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and interactive software creator Frieder Weiss. Beneath the glow of a sophisticated video tracking system, a lone organic being mutates in and out of human form into unfamiliar, sensual and grotesque creature states. Utilising the latest in interactive video technologies a digital landscape is generated in real time in response to the dancer’s movement. The body’s gestures are extended by and in turn manipulate the video world that surrounds it, rendering no two performances exactly the same.
“…an astonishing performance, tackling Obarzanek’s thrashing, flailing, joint-crunching action like a high-velocity missile, with only occasional respite.” – The Age

The Pitch is a hilarious satire about the trials and tribulations of trying to crack the big time in Hollywood. Peter Houghton’s brilliant show was critically acclaimed and a huge hit in Melbourne in 2006 and 2007 and was awarded two prestigious Green Room Awards for performance and for best new play. The Pitch is set in the very humble apartment of aspiring screenwriter Walter Weinerman just before he is about to sell his screenplay - an action, mystery, revenge, loser-makes-good, romance film set in way too many exotic locations - to an all-powerful Hollywood film industry panel.

The Burlesque Hour is a lush velvet trimmed salon where vaudeville and variety, circus and sideshow, striptease and cartoon strip, boho and butoh, music hall, monologue and mayhem are hijacked by astonishing performance art divas. Join internationally acclaimed Queen of Cabaret Bizarre, the Mistress of Grand Guignol Moira Finucane; Moscow circus trained circus and burlesque star Azaria Universe; Japanese butoh dancer and shock cabaret artiste Yumi Umiumare; and the legendary iconoclast Maude Davey with her infamous and fabled strawberry act as they mix it up with luminous guest artistes… your table awaits.