Ep. 16 - The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes: generative disaster

PuSh Play

Bruce Gladwin discusses how a disastrous first showing influenced the show’s creation. See The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes at the 2024 PuSh Festival from Feb 1-3 at the York Theatre. Co-Presented with Neworld Theatre and The Cultch.

Show Notes

Gabrielle Martin chats with Bruce Gladwin, director and co-author of The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes. Gabrielle and Bruce discuss the show’s source and evolution, the need to place obstacles in front of actors, how a disastrous first showing of the piece led to the show it is today, and more, including:

• What is the source for this particular piece, and how has it evolved since then?

• Why is it sometimes the director’s job to place obstacles in front of actors instead of just giving them free rein?

• How did a disastrous first showing of the piece lead to the show it is today?

• Why is it just not that simple to say what you think and be heard? And how does this work explore that?

• How do you perceive societal change with regards to the assumptions we hold about others?

• What is unusual about this piece for Back to Back Theatre?

About Back to Back Theatre

Based in the Victorian regional centre of Geelong, Back to Back Theatre is widely recognised as an Australian theatre company of national and international significance. The company is driven by an ensemble of actors who are perceived to have intellectual disabilities and is considered one of Australia’s most important cultural exporters.

We contend our operation as a theatre company is beyond expectation of possibility: an affirmation for human potential. The company’s existence contributes to the richness and diversity of Australian life and palpably projects Geelong, Victoria and Australia to the world as innovative, sophisticated and dynamic.

The company has undertaken presentations and screenings at the world’s pre-eminent contemporary arts festivals and venues such as the Edinburgh International Festival, London’s V&A Museum and the Barbican, Vienna Festival, Holland Festival and Theater der Welt, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Public Theater in New York, Festival Tokyo, West Kowloon Cultural District Authority in Hong Kong, and Buenos Aires International Festival.

Back to Back Theatre has received 21 national and international awards including the International Ibsen Award, a Helpmann Award for Best Australian Work, an Edinburgh International Festival Herald Angel Critics’ Award, two Age Critics’ Awards, a New York Bessie and the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Group Award for our long-standing contribution to the development of Australian theatre. In 2015, Bruce Gladwin received the Australia Council for the Arts’ Inaugural Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre. The ensemble were awarded the ‘Best Ensemble’ in the 2019 Green Room Awards.

Land Acknowledgement

Bruce joins the podcast from the land of the Wadawurrung, now colonially known as the state of Victoria in Australia.

Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.