Queens on a Rug (2016)
Filling in time, taking up space, taking up one another’s space, filling in one another’s time. This is a mash-up of work created with Jo Lloyd in a 3-hour performance that re-plays and re-orders material from forwards to backwards and backwards to forwards. One day Jo and I were having a cup of tea on the grassy median strip in the middle of a road outside a cafe in Melbourne. It was a nice day and occasionally people we knew going in and out of the cafe would stop by to say hello. We would receive these visitors and then pick up our conversation where we left off. Jo said, look at us, we’re like a couple of queens on a rug. This is a piece that tries to recreate that moment, our tendency to merge into one another like angle fish, a shared desire for desire and melodrama, and our talking and moving about nothing in that coded language of friendship. In part inspired by Torvill & Dean.
Choreographed and Performed by NICOLA GUNN & JO LLOYD
Comissioned by La Mama Theatre in celebration of its 50th Birthday.