GEMMA BROCKIS

shunt (2000-14)

Gemma was a founder of the hugely influential and multi-award-winning Shunt collective, which transformed the British arts scene in the early 2000s, producing both large scale immersive shows and a curated night-club.

• Shunt pioneered what came to be known as immersive theatre.
  WIRED

• The daddies of immersive theatre.
  TIME OUT

• Shunt are innovators whose ambitious work has long worried at the definitions of audience, venue and performance, whose powers to unsettle and surprise through sheer theatricality far outstripped the company’s many aesthetic imitators.
  TOTAL THEATRE

• An astounding piece of theatre. Radical. Original. Incredible.
  TIME OUT

• Fantastic, alarming inventiveness.
  THE INDEPENDENTT

• The most innovative theatre company in Britain.
  THE GUARDIAN

• The best bar in London.
  THE EVENING STANDARD

• The most astonishing and disorienting coup de theatre I've ever seen. It really felt, watching Dance Bear Dance, like something new was happening. It was in the best way totally mind-blowing. I've never seen anything like it. It was strange, wild, beautiful and funny and it conjured astonishing things out of the darkness. 
  NICHOLAS HYTNER

• To say that it was exciting just wouldn't do justice to the experience. Your preconceptions were forcibly rearranged. 
  TOM MORRIS

• The whole thing felt like being inside the head of a drunken genius.
  THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

FREELANCE PERFORMER IN immersive

Gemma recently performed in Deadweight’s groundbreaking The Manikins. Other collaborations as a devising actor in immersive include: Darkfield, Coney, Gideon Reeling and she created a piece for the BAC one-on-one festival, 2011:

• The luminous Gemma Brockis is Max, and she’s so adorable you just want to eat her up. The company have conjured a space where you can escape from the world - as delightful as any pudding. Go and be transported.
  FOURTH WALL

DIRECTING BEYOND SHUNT

Gemma works in many collaborations - notably with Silvia Mercuriali, with whom she has travelled the world, creating theatrical shows which use real landscapes as their scenography - Pinocchio 2007 (in a car driving through the city at sunset) & Still Night. Other collaborations into directing performance for Buenos Aires Fashion Week and Royal Palaces. In lockdown, Gemma lay in bed and made oddvent - a digital advent calendar shared across over 24 days.

• The real star of Pinocchio is Dublin itself, made strangely new and wondrous through the smudged windows of the car.
  DUBLIN TIMES - Award nomination for innovation

• Oddvent was necessary for the communal soul of participants and makers alike. It sustained us and nourished us during an isolating time, and brought us together. Full of heart.
  JULIA MASLI - Participating artist in Oddvent

Testimonials

• I have worked with Gemma on numerous immersive projects. She is an incredible theatre maker, writer & collaborator. She has a unique ability to determine what is truly important and meaningful amongst the general chaotic overload of the creative process.
  DAVID ROSENBERG - Co-founder of Shunt / Now AD of Darkfield

• Gemma Brockis is one my favorite bright minds in immersive performance.’
  BRIAN SOLOMON - Creative Tech Director at Framestore, NYC and creator of the XR team at Meow Wulf

LINKS

• A conversation on immersive practice for Voidspace.

FULL SCALE IMMERSIVE SHUNT shows :

SELECTED IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES :

Image: Britt Hatzius (Pinocchio) | Susanne Dietz (Shunt Shows) | NK Guy (Shunt Lounge) | Lottie Davies (Oddvent) | (Hotel)