Acclaimed writer and performer Duncan Sarkies (Scarfies, Lovepuke, Wild Man Eyes) teams up with sound designer and composer Nic McGowan to present Instructions for Modern Living. In the tradition of conceptual musicians and performance artists like Laurie Anderson and David Byrne, Instructions for Modern Living is a time capsule of the 'wee small hours'. Music and dialogue combine to create a tragic-comic sound-montage of loneliness in suburban and urban New Zealand; it is a modern update of Eleanor Rigby.

Following on from Sarkies' acclaimed one man show Wild Man Eyes, which toured nationally and internationally from 1999 to 2003, Instructions for Modern Living will be performed in festivals in New Zealand, in Canada and at the prestigious Barbican Theatre in London in 2008.

Instant Happiness
Instant Happiness Ltd. is a collaboration between writer/performer Duncan Sarkies and composer/musician Nic McGowan.

As a culture we have undergone colonisation through the media of the concept of happiness as a marketable commodity. We live in a society filled with billboards, magazine images and a TV diet of happy, smiling beautiful faces - contrast this against the actual way we live: an endless shuffling of credit as we struggle from one bill to another, a succession of dinner parties and housework and boozing and paperwork and television and sagging bodies and coping with daily obstacles, as we are force-fed a hard sell of fast food, diet infomercials, real estate agents and hair loss product commercials, happy meals and internet pornography, wrinkle preventative moisturiser, beer loyalty and erection pills. Service with a smile, banks who always say yes, bumper stickers that say be content with what you've got, fruit machines with promises guaranteed to get you out of your rut: Improve your memory and everything will be solved, trust in God and your sins will be absolved, go to the gym and you will feel and look great, show someone you love them with a personalised number plate...

Instructions for Modern Living, the first show from Instant Happiness Ltd., is a time capsule offering an interpretation of what goes on behind closed doors in our homes, searching for the profound within the mundane, as we try to find our place in a changing society, and our souls in a market saturated world.

Contact:
Fenn Gordon
PO Box 24173
Wellington NZ 6142
Mob +61 424 743 705
fenn@tandem.co.nz