Why do we do things that we know are bad for us?
As day breaks on a bleak dystopian future, a dishevelled survivor shuffles through the shifting plastic wasteland. Nothing grows, the air burns and all life has seemingly disappeared. He’s out of food, out of water, and slowly going out of his mind.
And now that there’s nothing to eat, what’s left of his body is starting to look disturbingly delicious… Surely just a finger or two can’t hurt?
Mesmerising, poignant and terrifyingly hilarious, this work will have audiences on the edge of their seat as they contemplate a fate that we may all end up facing.
“the kind of work that gives Melbourne its reputation for considered, influential independent theatre” Tim Byrne - Time Out
AutoCannibal premiered at TheatreWorks in 2019, then went on to play at Sydney Festival 2021 and Darwin Festival 2022. It remains available for further touring.
Reviewers praised the bold creativity of the show, calling it ‘an intense exploration of the paradox of self-destructiveness’ and saying that ‘Jones is a remarkable performer, and you can’t take your eyes off him’ - Alison Croggon, Witness Performance.
Thematically the show explores environmental destruction through the metaphor of an individual body, treating human created climate change as a global act of self harm.
Elements of clowning, sideshow and performance art combine to create an embodied dystopia that is uncomfortably amusing.
With an innovative lighting design by Paul Lim (Nirbhaya, Briefs, Melbourne Festival) and an immersive soundscape by Bonnie Knight, a world of intimate spectacle and horror unfolds as plastic bags, garbage and saws are given an eerie symbolic quality. Traditional circus acts (Chinese Pole, Aerials, Tightwire) are reimagined as futile struggles, while the human body is excavated and treated as a site of exploration, creating a playground of rich darkness that holds an uneasy tension between unsettling madness and sly absurdist humour.
