Green Screen (2014)

Green Screen was in part inspired by this quote from Buckminster Fuller: ‘If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do… How would I be? What would I do?’

In the work, two scenes of protest play out simultaneously alongside each other. Each scene is the corollary of the other. The composite image is designed to evoke a feeling of peripheral anxiety. On one side of the stage a group of strangers have gathered together to protest the extinction of the human race. On the other side of the stage, a woman builds an effigy of her friend Rachel after describing a novel called Clear by the British author Nicola Barker. The 2008 novel is about David Blaine and his much publicised endurance stunt, where he was suspended in a perspex box over the River Thames.

Green Screen quietly celebrates our resilience and our connectedness. There are some things that feel impossible to do anything about, while there are other things you simply can’t do anything about. So this work is about just doing something, together.

“This is hilarious, moving and devastatingly good theatre.” Herald Sun

“Funny, smart, heartfelt… Gunn keeps her audience on a knife’s edge between profundity and the ludicrous.” The Age


Written by NICOLA GUNN in collaboration with the actors
Directed by NICOLA GUNN
Performance NAT CURSIO, TOM DAVIES, NICOLA GUNN, JONNO KATZ AND KERITH MANDERSON-GALVIN
Sound Design DUANE MORRISON
Lighting Design GWEN GILCHRIST
Video Design NICK ROUX
Script Dramaturgy DANIEL SACK


This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria and by the MTC through the NEON Festival of Independent Theatre. Green Screen was developed at the Richmond Theatrette with support from Yarra City Council and AKA Studios with the support of Lindsay Cox. Photos by Pier Carthew.