SHRAPNEL

Created and Performed by Natalie Gamsu.

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.

An evening of storytelling, music, and yearning to find the flamenco dancer inside, SHRAPNEL, is an autobiographical theatrical work created by Natalie Gamsu, director Stephen Nicolazzo, and dramaturg Ash Flanders.

Natalie Gamsu grew up in Namibia in the 60’s, as far away from being a flamenco dancer as one could possibly get. A country that was colonized by the British, the Germans and by the South African government.

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

In SHRAPNEL, Gamsu searches for meaning through diabolically funny stories of tsuris- the Yiddish word for pain, eating her mother’s blood by mistake, psilocybin spiritual journeys into the past and of course, her shapeshifting days suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. There are also stories of meerkats and tortoises without their shells. And customer service arguments over tinned fruit.

Combining poetic writing, ridiculous and heartbreaking personal stories, and the deep and haunting singing voice of one of Australia’s most gifted performers, SHRAPNEL is a celebration of Natalie Gamsu’s strange, beautiful, and fearless capacity to expose her eccentricities and uncanny life experiences with you all.