Earshot
By Kate Hunter & collaborators
Part live performance, part undercover surveillance operation, Earshot is driven by theatre-maker Kate Hunter’s lifetime obsession of eavesdropping on the private conversations of complete strangers.
In this critically acclaimed collaboration, overheard stories gathered from the general public are combined with voice-activated text projection to offer a fly-on-the- wall insight into the lives of others: personal, epic, comic and sometimes devastating.
Working closely with electroacoustic musician Jem Savage and performer/composer Josephine Lange, Kate uses analog objects and digital technology to craft a celebration of the Australian vernacular. Poetic, musical, horrific and hilarious, Earshot asks us to draw a line in the sand of the public domain. Where is that line? The park? The cafe? Your street? Your back garden? Who should be permitted to listen? Operatic in style and form, Earshot brings the poignant, pedestrian, hilarious story of us – the general public – into sharp relief.
Concept, creation, performance: Kate Hunter | Performance, composition: Josephine Lange | Electroacoustic design: Jem Savage | Dramaturgy: Glynis Angell | Lighting design: Gina Gascoigne
CREDITS
Photos & video by Leo Dale
BACKGROUND
Kate Hunter’s cross-disciplinary and immersive performance is stimulated by investigations into cognitive neuroscience, the body, the senses, diseases and dying, autobiography, talking to herself, sadness, and the strange territory of memory. Read more about Kate at her website.
‘Hunter’s words have that trained liveness that allow each recollection a moment’s return’ – John Bailey, RealTime
PREMIERE SEASON
29 Nov – 3 Dec 2017 | fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
TOURING INFORMATION
Earshot is now available for touring
Click here to download our PDF
‘A meticulously considered interplay of visual design, soundscape and performance … funny, hideous and thought-provoking… Hunter’s text is a revelation, thrumming with the tragicomic pulse of life as it is experienced rather than as we imagine it to be… ‘ ****4 stars, The Age
‘A brilliantly constructed and effortlessly performed exploration of the blurred lines between private details and publicly available information in the modern age.’ *****5 stars, Theatre People