Hello My Name Is

Nicola Gunn's strange, oddly touching one-woman show is a true interactive theatre experience, but without being obnoxious. It's ostensibly presented as a community workshop about social change – one of those buzzword-laden self-actualising seminars so beloved by grant boards. Gunn is the workshop's creator and leader, and she is astounding. Full of puff and bluster one minute, the next she'll reveal more fragility and tenderness than it seems possible to bear. It's not possible to sit back and simply watch her, as she demands that her audience participates fully in what she's offering, which, in the end, is so much more than a mere community workshop.

What is it all about? Well, it's open – very open – to interpretation. It could be a deconstruction of our local sense of community, or an examination of the hollowness of social change. It could be a critique of the neediness of performers and what they demand of an audience. However, whatever you think Hello My Name Is was supposed to be, chances are your reaction says more about you than it does about what you saw. That's the innate, awkward genius of this production: it reaches into the hearts of those involved with it and touches something you may not want to acknowledge, or even knew was there. Enter with an open mind, and you'll leave buzzing with questions and theories not only about the production, but about human interaction on a grander scale.