ICONIC PERFORMERS BRING RETURN-SEASON OF PROVOCATIVE WORK BACK TO TĀMAKI MAKAURAU
Fresh from a slew of sold-out seasons around Aotearoa, The Most Naked is returning to Auckland, at Q Theatre 13 - 17 June 2023.
The new season commences due to popular demand, almost two-years to the day from its debut at Auckland Live’s 2021 Cabaret Season.
‘Tasker - Poland delivers a gut- wrenching social and personal opinion statement with command, passion, turmoil and relentless physicality,’ – Theatreview.
‘An electrifying, moving example of everything contemporary theatre should be,’ – The Most Naked audience member.
Fearlessly sinking its teeth into cultural mores around nudity, strip tease and the flashing of skin, The Most Naked is a live art experience that strips nakedness right down to the bone.
Inspired by cabaret and burlesque art-forms, The Most Naked is steeped in
mesmerising dance artistry, subversive theatre, spectacular live music, and political eroticism.
Compelling, wild, and unsettlingly sexy, this multidisciplinary performance
work-cum-cabaret will invigorate and interrogate as audiences take an explorative journey to the relationship with nudity with the live musical wizardry of internationally renowned composer and musician Lucien Johnson.
The Most Naked is produced, written, directed, and performed by force-of-nature movement alchemist and performer Hannah Tasker-Poland, who is a highly regarded dance artist, choreographer, stage and screen actor, avant-garde burlesque/fetish artist, SPFX performance specialist, stunt performer, accredited Intimacy Coordinator & Director, model and muse with over 18 years professional experience in the industry.
Her body of work includes well-known companies and large productions such as Borderline Arts Ensemble, The New Zealand Dance Company, Footnote NZ Dance, Auckland Theatre Company, World of Wearable Arts, ATC’s The Made, Pleasuredome The Musical, Ghost In The Shell and Ash vs Evil Dead.
‘Hannah’s versatility in playing both the funny girl and the formidable woman is an outright nod to the power and beauty that women have always had but that has perhaps been feared or wasted in a man’s world,’- Lindsay Brown, Keeping Up With NZ
Her compelling artistry and powerful stage presence hang somewhere between the human and the divine, lifting audiences' gaze from the mundane into the extraordinary.
Racking up a sumptuous array of sold-out seasons across Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Hawke’s Bay to spectacular reviews and box office waiting lists,
audiences have described their experiences as ‘powerful’ and ‘cathartic,’ as well as ‘One of the best piecesof theatre I’ve seen in years.’
Lucien Johnson is the composer for Borderline Arts Ensemble and for their work, LOBSTERS, Johnson was awarded Sound Designer of the Year and was also nominated for Outstanding Composer at the Wellington Theatre Awards. Johnson wrote the script and music for STRASBOURG 1518, which was a major commission for the 2020 New Zealand Festival. It was subsequently performed at the 2021 Auckland Arts Festival and at a sold-out return Wellington season to rave reviews.
‘A miraculous musician with a terrific creative imagination’ - Radio NZ
The Most Naked is ‘much much more than a show - it will toy with your senses, twist your mind and send you deep into your own behaviour, values and experiences,’ – The Most Naked audience member.
Hannah Tasker-Poland is the Director of projectMUSE and is well known for her unique brand of innovative, captivating, visceral and unsettlingly sexy multidisciplinary live performance works, stripping notions of the risqué or provocative right down to the bone. Her sumptuously dark, fiercely feminist work speaks to the fascination, power and politics of the femme form, while upholding body autonomy and erotic agency through powerful storytelling and performance.
Lucien Johnson is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who has been described as ‘a saxophonist and composer of rare excellence and mettle.’ Involved in a diverse range of artistic projects, his music always succeeds in maintaining a distinctive sound, with a chameleonic emotional range that can shift from warm and intimate through to radical and rebellious. He has released several acclaimed albums, toured in six continents and produced works for major international arts and music festivals. He has won multiple awards, including the prestigious Harriet Friedlander New York Residency from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.
Johnson has composed music for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand Dance Company, for short film and documentaries and for his own projects. He was musical director of Shogun Orchestra which released two albums on German label Jakarta Records. His latest album under his own name, West of the Sun, was released on Japanese label Wonderful Noise and was a finalist for NZ Jazz Album of the Year.
‘Dancer Hannah Tasker-Poland is a strong, sensual creature with technique to slice onions and someone I would happily watch do her tax returns,’- Theatreview.
THE MOST NAKED
Q THEATRE
13 - 17 JUNE
Tickets on sale now
Hannah Tasker-Poland - Producer, Choreographer/Director, Performer
Lucien Johnson - Composer, Musician
Lucy Lynch - Perfomer
Holly Finch - Performer
Brynne Tasker-Poland - Lighting Designer/Operator
Elizabeth Whiting - Costume Design
Emmanuel Reynaud - Set Design
Yolanda Bartram/BodyFX NZ - Special Effects Prosthetics Artist
Developed in partnership with Auckland Live Supported by Creative New Zealand and Q Theatre.