Event Series: Australian Musical Theatre Festival 2024

Australian Musical Theatre Festival: Shrapnel

Name: Shrapnel
Start: 2024-05-16T19:30:00+10:00
End: 2024-05-16T20:30:00+10:00
Location: Royal Oak Hotel

16 May @ 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm AEST

This year’s festival promises 19 events over five days in all manner of venues from hotels and theatre foyers to winding alleyways and the Cataract Gorge. Artistic Director Tyran Parke’s wide-ranging program includes three inventively staged musicals: John Bucchino’s It’s Only Life, Marry Me A Little, which features material cut from Stephen Sondheim’s shows, and Maury Yeston’s Nine. Headline performers include Kerrie Anne Greenland, Josh Piterman, Patrice Tipoki and Queenie van de Zandt.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

When award winning performer Natalie Gamsu’s partner turned to her and said, “Darling, do you think you were a flamenco dancer in a past life?”, she decided that yes, she was.

And this show was born.

Growing up in Namibia in the 60s, Natalie was as far away from being a flamenco dancer as one could possibly get… in a country that was colonised by the British, the Germans and the South African government.

She grew up under the apartheid regime, went to boarding school in Cape Town, performed in underground nightclubs during State of Emergencies, and searched for a way to make sense of a country that made no sense to her at all.

In Shrapnel, Natalie searches for meaning through diabolically funny stories of tsuris – the Yiddish word for pain. From eating her mother’s blood by mistake, psilocybin spiritual journeys into the past, and of course, her shapeshifting days suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. From stories of meerkats and tortoises without their shells, and customer service arguments over tinned fruit, Shrapnel has it all.

An autobiographical theatrical work, Shrapnel is an evening of storytelling, music, and yearning to find the flamenco dancer inside.