EAT ME

A solo dance theatre work created and performed by Narrm based artist, Jessica Thompson, EAT ME brings her two decades of artistic and personal experience to a work bridging dreamscapes with domesticated reality. 

Fed up with confinement and idealisation, Venus steps beyond her shell and hosts a private dinner party for the unknown. She opens an oyster, inadvertently serving and consuming herself and descends into a delirium underworld where love and death, brutality and pleasure, delicacy and mutilation are one. Only with a horrific sacrifice can she realise her losses and return to the topside world.

Can she take a shucking knife to her own heart in order to live?

Part confession, part prayer, part finger to systemic numbness EAT ME invites witness to the intimate rituals of dining, bathing and desire, illuminating cultural contempt for dark femininity within a collaged feast of myth, ritual and archetype.

The table is set

Sit up nicely

And undress

Take the blade

Leverage the cut 

Slip quietly inside

Loss within loss within loss

Biting soft

salt and tears  

kiss of the sea

in the deep underdark

the stirring of yes

EAT ME

Duration

45 minutes, no interval

Content Advice

This performance features partial nudity and the use of raw, organic materials

COLLABORATORS & CONTRIBUTORS

Choreography & performance by Jessica Thompson

Produced by Jessica Thompson

Music/Sound by Felicia Atkinson

Lighting Design by Joe Paradise Lui

Images & motion projection by Studio Ridler

Co Produced by Arianna Marchiori

Production/ Stage Management Katya Shevtsov

Costuming sourced and styled by Jessica Thompson

TEAM BIOS

Choreography and performance/ Producer, Jessica Thompson

Jessica is a Naarm/Melbourne-based independent dancer and movement artist. A graduate of The Australian Ballet School, she has performed globally as a company artist with leading national institutions including The Australian Ballet and Sydney Dance Company. Her extensive career features masterworks by traditional and modern choreographers alongside multi disciplinary creative collaborations. Her recent solo and collaborative highlights include performing in Yuiko Masukawa’s,Yugen at Frame Festival and co-creating and dancing in new, independent seasons across Melbourne as part of M Collective Dance. Jessica bridges classical precision with experimental contemporary embodiment. EAT ME is her first self produced solo work and weaves her deep lineage of technical movement mastery with visceral and archetypal storytelling.

Co Producer, Arianna Marchiori

Arianna is an Italian-born professional ballet dancer, producer, and the Founder and Artistic Director of M.Collective. Her international dance career spans Europe, North America, and Australia, having performed with acclaimed companies including San Francisco Ballet, English National Ballet, Dortmund Ballet, Ballet Ireland, and the National Ballet of Ostrava. Her repertoire includes classical masterpieces like Swan Lake and Don Quixote, alongside contemporary works by Mauro Bigonzetti and Ohad Naharin. Since relocating to Melbourne, Arianna has expanded her creative leadership into arts management and independent producing. She is the creative, founding force behind M Collective Dance, an independent collective presenting intimate and exclusive new contemporary work in Melbourne. She has worked closely with local avant-garde mainstays Theatre Works and Speak Percussion, and recently served as Associate Producer for Brothers Bare (Melbourne Fringe). Arianna is passionate about driving cross-disciplinary, movement-based storytelling and fostering collaborative community platforms.

Production/ Stage manager, Katya Shevtsov

Katya is a highly versatile Australian stage manager, production manager, and multi-disciplinary arts worker with a decade of experience on the stage informing her work behind the scenes. Her extensive career spans premier national arts institutions, major festivals, and independent arts spaces. 

Experiences include touring Australia and Internationally in Performance, Production and Stage Management capacities, varied roles in major Australian Festivals, coordination of large-scale Concerts, intensive engagement within Disability Arts frameworks, logistics for a Warner Bros feature film, outdoor Festival Operations Management, and Stage Managing a touring production whilst simultaneously performing on a live mic for the duration of the work.  

Katya is currently Production Manager at Vitalstatistix on Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide) where she has been based since 2017. She is also Mum to a 6-year-old ‘ASM’ who loves to help pushing road cases, setting props & sorting backstage snacks whenever he gets a chance.

Joe Paradise Lui, Lighting Design

Joe is a highly prolific Singaporean-born lighting designer, writer, and composer who recently relocated from Perth to Melbourne. A central figure in the Western Australian independent sector, Joe has designed for Black Swan State Theatre Company, Yirra Yaakin, and The Blue Room Theatre, with standout lighting credits including I Am My Own Wife and You Know We Belong Together. Since moving eastward, Joe has embedded into the Victorian mainstage scene, designing landmark productions for Melbourne Theatre Company (Is God Is, A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya) and Malthouse Theatre (This Is Living, Anna K). Joe brings an atmospheric, experimental, and technically precise lens to every stage.

Music/ Sound, Felicia Atkinson

Félicia is an internationally acclaimed Parisian-born avant-garde musician, electroacoustic composer, and sound designer. Known for her deeply atmospheric and tactile sonic landscapes, her multifaceted practice weaves together field recordings, MIDI instrumentation, piano, and spoken-word poetry in both French and English. She has performed extensively at prestigious global venues and festivals, including the Barbican Centre (London), Philharmonie de Paris, and the Melbourne Open House / Monash University Museum of Art. Alongside her solo recording career on Shelter Press—the independent label and publishing house she co-founded—Félicia frequently designs bespoke audio work for filmmakers and premier global fashion houses like Prada and Burberry. She brings a highly transportive, cinematic, and boundary-pushing approach to live audio environments. Her music featured in EAT ME utilises pre existing arrangements personally selected by Felicia that are reflective of the specific themes of elemental descent and ascent, feasting and loss present in the work.

Images & motion projection, Studio Ridler

Justin Ridler is an innovative Melbourne-based visual artist, director, and fashion photographer operating at the intersection of physical and virtual mediums. Renowned for integrating traditional photography with cutting-edge digital technologies, his practice frequently blends computer-generated imagery (CGI), 3D animation, and motion capture to abstract and capture human performance. A regular collaborator with premier performing arts companies like The Australian Ballet and Sydney Dance Company, Justin’s editorial and commercial portfolio also spans global luxury houses including Prada, Dior, and Vogue. For this production, Justin leverages his unique approach to motion and space-time physics to deliver striking photographic elements and immersive motion projections.

MtSV are a proud supporter and venue partner for EAT ME

Special thanks to La Macina di San Cresci, The Australian Ballet and City Dance Centre for their generous support and provision of space to create this work.