Monica Hunken, USA

Two weeks before Christmas, Monica flew into the heart of the Persian Gulf to work a catering job at a royal wedding party and ended up biking across three countries in the Middle East. Alone. This play chronicles the true story of her desert odyssey. Watch the broke, blonde American swerve her bicycle through close encounters with military capture, sex tourism, Gulf royalty, three wedding parties and near death. As Monica perseveres in her adventure as a parade of one, defeating trouble at every turn, indulging her super-hero fetishism, she discovers her biggest adversary might be herself.

 Monica believes her aim as a solo performer is to inspire bravery in the audience, a bravery to acknowledge their connection to each person in the world.  The intimacy of storytelling has the power to bridge this connection.

She developed a documentary- adventure storytelling genre by generating material from she own life experiences of seeking.  She explores the world, usually by bicycle, in order to seek the history of family members or to discover the stories of strangers in a foreign land and bring them back home to share with other communities.  Her first solo play, Reading the Water, a sort of personal investigative journalism, was about a journey she took along the California coast to discover the truth behind her scientist father’s mysterious death, caused by conditions at his workplace.  The second play, Blondie of Arabia, details the story of Monica’s solo bicycle ride across the Middle East and the comical and sometimes dangerous adventures she experienced on the way.  Monica performs all the characters in her stories and attempts to draw up the physical immediate experiences viscerally and to the audience senses.

Traveller, author, directress, actor of all of characters Monica Hunken

30. 6. - 4. 7. 2012

PRAHA