Elephant Club
Elephant Club is a was a work I made in 2002. Here are some quotes from reviews:
“An intense and strenuous performance and yet it is refined and eloquent. Gunn is a fine exponent of physical theatre - and The Elephant Club is an unusual and rather special experience.”
THE ADVERTISER
“The Elephant Club is a triumph of quiet charm and humour”
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
“Extraordinary”
ORLANDO SENTINEL
Rhoda Brown is an unassuming office worker trapped in the tedium of the Everyday whose romantic soul rises above the beige of her daily life.
Rhoda works a monotonous job as the automated telephone “on hold” voice in a room the size of a shoebox tucked away in the basement of an office building at the end of a bus ride. On one otherwise ordinary day, the sonorous voice of her “Learn-To-Speak-Spanish-Fluently-in-Seventeen-Easy-Lessons” tape beckons with fantasies of a new life of romance and intrigue, and when she receives a surprise call from the man on the bus, Rhoda’s life burgeons to the possibility of love and happiness. Uttering the bare minimum of words, Rhoda comes alive in her romantic fantasies and it is finally Rhoda’s neighbour who implores her to break out. The Elephant Club is a funny and poignant story about a little mousy woman who seizes the moment and rises above her desperate mediocrity.
The Elephant Club includes a cast of six eccentric characters: our mute heroin Rhoda Brown, her extravagantly wealthy boss Mr Sibley, obsequious co-worker Dolores, the besotted bellhop, Rhoda’s cat-loving mother, and the enigmatic, cabaret-singing neighbour. The stage is turned into an entire city using one bag and a chair, one actor and an imaginative landscape.