Born in a Taxi and Theatre Works present…

No Former Performer Has Performed This Performance Before #8.

A high risk performance with no safety net. No script and no plan.

Performed annually until one of them dies… who will go first?

No Former Performer Has Performed This Performance Before #8 (NFP#8) is the eighth iteration of this parachute-less skydive into risk, improvisation, and audience-performer reciprocity.

“Not dance, not theatre, not hilarious comedy, not performance art, and yet,
somehow, cleverly all of the above.”
- Fiona Scott Norman, The Age

Three of Melbourne’s most distinguished and virtuosic performers will willingly live and re-live the actor’s nightmare night after night. The galvanising gaze of the audience meets the embodied skills of the performers… and they’re off! The result is an exhilarating show; edgy, immediate and playful.

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TICKETS ON SALE NOW 〰️

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Over a two-week season, No Former Performer will once again evolve before the eyes of the audience.

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Concession and discounted tickets available.

No Former Performer #3: 2018 - Dancehouse

“We have mastered the art of turning nothing into something. Our rigorous methodology serves as a portal into the unfathomable mysteries of the unconscious. The performance is a living document of an unfolding art form, deepening artistic and personal relationships, and an accumulation of collective knowledge.”
- Penny Baron

Created before the audience's eyes the work weaves Michael Havir’s musical soundscape of emerging worlds with Bronwyn Pringle’s shape-shifting lighting design and Dagmara Gieysztor’s visual alchemy with the two actors, in an unrepeatable night of riveting theatre.

2022: No Former Performer #7 at Dancehouse. Photograph by Paul Dunn. Fringe Festival Nominee for Best Dance & Physical Theatre performance.

NFP#8 is a show full of risk, a risk the artists believe is worth taking, that sets it apart, and is why audiences keep coming back on multiple nights. NFP is an antidote to our increasingly risk averse society. Surprising, unpredictable, funny and poetic.

‘An ode to consistency, to relationship, to process, to aging. In this era of “the next big thing”, when work in the arts feels so piecemeal, so contracted and freelance, the pure ambition of this commitment is both breathtaking and deeply reassuring.’
- Emily Collier, Witness Performance

Audiences are encouraged to come more than once with half price ticket discounts for multiple shows.

‘We manifest a state of collective daydreaming into tangible worlds that appear and morph, from the absurd to the amusing, and everywhere in between. Only possible through the trust of each other, the intelligence of our bodies and our love of being alive to the possibility of each moment’
- Carolyn Hanna

NFP#8 is a trio between Born in a Taxi’s two artistic directors Penny Baron and Carolyn Hanna, and sound artist/artistic associate Michael Havir (Yothu Yindi, Melbourne Ska Orchestra) guided by master improviser Andrew Morrish.

Their intent is to elevate the status of performance improvisation to an art form genre in its own right. Seeking a new aesthetic in performance improvisation across dance, theatre, and music genres that isn’t defined by either but aims to inspire new conversations across all.

NFP#1: Creative development at Bundanon Artists in Residence program

Born in a Taxi is one of Melbourne’s most highly regarded, award-winning physical theatre ensembles and creators of contemporary performance. Renowned for their immediacy, responsiveness, and interaction with their audience, they are recognised for producing highly original, physically driven, and participatory works in theatres, festivals, in site-specific and outdoor contexts that focus on real-time co-creation.