Directors notes

David Woods

Thanks for coming along to Circonoclasm the 2022 second year student ensemble production at NICA. In sharing my practice with the school as a guest director, I asked the students to engage in a style of deadpan physical theatre shtick that I’ve developed with my company Ridiculusmus and as collaborator with Back to Back theatre and others and found to be very pleasing - both for the audiences who have ventured into the non-commercial realms of the arts, and myself and fellow artists endeavoring to populate that world over the last thirty years.  Adding the brilliant skills, rigor and personalities of what I am sure will be a vintage cohort of students to this practice has been a total pleasure.  

Iconoclasm – the destruction of images – is by no means a modern phenomenon, but rose in our contemporary consciousness as an adjunct to the Black Lives Matter movement when statues became sites, once again, of political confrontation. Throwing custard at famous works, shredding your own paintings or the theft of masterpieces has occupied a liminal space of thrills and entertainment on the one hand and willful ignorance of the violence and hurt that usually accompany them on the other, for centuries.  

In Circonoclasm we have embraced the willful ignorance side fully in pursuit of the thrills and entertainment and set aside the darker side for another day. The piece aspires to be a joyous romp that blows away any residual COVID blues and prioritises the sheer joy of communal fun without apology. Saying that, the pursuit of serious silliness we have undertaken is not without its higher purpose. The metaphorical interpretation of the production is there for the taking should you wish to. To quote the NGV Picasso art-thieves that sparked the idea for this exploration:  

“Dear Cack-head, Swamp-rats and gas bags, we have stolen the weeping woman as a protest against the niggardly funding of the arts in this hick State and the unimaginatively stupid insistence that what remains becomes everything that the arts are not: slick, shallow and utterly meaningless” The Australian Cultural Terrorists.

– David Woods

EVENT INFO
Bookings: 
Via Trybooking
Tickets between $28 - $35

Performances: 
Tuesday 13 September 7.30pm (Preview)
Wednesday 14 September 7.30pm (Opening Night)
Thursday 15 September 7.30pm
Friday 16 September 7.30pm 
Saturday 17 September 2.00pm
Saturday 17 September 7.30pm

Duration: 
70 minutes

Location:
The National Institute of Circus Arts
39-59 Green Street, Prahran

Rated:
PG – Parental Guidance recommended
This show contains loud sound effects, smoke/haze and flashing light effects