Ludus Performance

Ludus Performance create playful, theatrical experiences and try to bring a sense of fun and delight to serious issues and complex questions.

Ludus Performance want a more playful world.
We’re making playful, participatory theatre experiences to address serious issues and complex questions with a sense of fun and delight.
We are fascinated by negotiation and debate.
We want our work to be relational – to inspire connections between audience members where meaning is made interpersonally as much as aesthetically.
We want to model more than represent, for our work to be something rather than just be about something.
We are passionate about many things but have decided to put our shoulder to the immense and slow moving wheel of culture.
We hope to make things better.
We are trying to sound like a company but really we are just Robbie O’Brien.
We’re excited to see what the future holds.

A list of projects in various stages of development and in no particular order.

Webe Robot Lab
A creative play experience for ages 1-5 commissioned by Imaginary Theatre for Powerkids: Little Artists at Play. Taking robots as a theme this work explores the enjoyment and learning as kids press a button and get a response. Along with the conveyor belt music machine, a colour piano and a giant soft robot for babies to explore the centre piece of the project is a game of making and pressing buttons. A jumping button for you, a hug button for mum and a being a chicken button for Professor Robbie. Playing robots helps us learn agency, express our needs, and feel in control.

Completed 1 seasons | Capacity: 60 | Duration 30min.

Plays Well With Others
Plays Well With Others is a game. It is a game of making games. It is a game of playing, arguing and deciding. It is a game of doing whatever makes you happy and the unexpected difficulties that presents.

Completed 2 seasons | Capacity: 25 | Duration: 1.5hr
Exegesis: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/101098/

Pay
Our relationships are transactional, our necessities are commodified, our politicians are for sale, poverty is weakness and wealth is a virtue. PAY is a relational performance about money, value, what can you offer, and how much you’re willing to pay to get the entertainment you want. It’s a game of making money, spending money and negotiating our own enjoyment.
‘Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.’ – Donald J. Trump

Completed 2 seasons | Capacity: 20 | Duration 1hr.

Heal
A one on one performance of healing and fortune telling. An act of ‘placebology’ that asks whether the performance of energetic healing and psychic reading can exist outside of the supernatural beliefs and does it still feel good?

In development: 2 showings | Capacity: 1 | Duration: 15min

Melancholipedia
A broken TED talk, a clown with a powerpoint, an attempt to embody the internet. Melancholipedia addresses how art deals with feelings of melancholy in an age of infinite information, cat pictures, conspiracy theories and hardcore porn.

In development: 1 showing of a 5min version | Capacity: any size theatre | Duration 1hr.

What Would We Know
The internet is changing the way we think, making us overestimate our own intelligence and rely on technology for our knowledge. What Would We Know as an act of community knowledge gathering that is organic, conditional and flawed. A hosted installation that simply asks what are the things we, here, know right now?

In development: 1 showing | Capacity: open space | Duration: 12hrs

Value: In Use
Value in Use is an intimate performance that asks what we value as art, what stories we consider worthy of telling and how much an individual’s thoughts and experiences are worth. Audience members are given tokens and asked to select from a menu of performative acts developed by each performer. We can’t see it all, we can’t afford everything we want, so how do we decide what we want? Initially created with young performers from QACI this format could be adapted to many marginalised groups.

Completed 1 season, requires redevelopment | Capacity: 25 | Duration: 1.5hrs

HEAD
Head strong, head in the clouds, head up his arse, head to head, don’t loose your head. Feasting on the carcass of The Bacchae, HEAD reexamines our perennially problematic relationship with ecstatic experiences and our own rationality. Can we find communion through dance and movement in these times of perilous popularism? An assault on the senses through movement, text, video and sound we feel the delight and danger of getting out of our heads.

In development | Capacity: Large theatre | Duration: 1.25hrs

We’re based in Brisbane, QLD
Email: robbie[at]ludusperformance.com
Phone: 0 4 0 0 7 2 9 1 4 7