All the Queen's Men
Images by Bryony Jackson. Edited by Takeshi Kondo.

Game Show

Arts House, Melbourne (Kulin Nations)

Win his fridge! Win his CD collection! Win his eczema cream! Win his plasma television! Welcome to Game Show!

About

Game Show is a show biz spectacle that examines one man’s desperate pursuit of fame and what he is willing to sacrifice for a chance at the big time. As your host, Tristan Meecham will put it all up for grabs to win your adoration.

Each night, fifty contestants with no performance experience, compete live on stage for the chance to take home a grand showcase of prizes: Tristan’s very own possessions!  With a cast of over 200 people, Game Show fuses live art, moral dilemmas and live cinema together in a critique of celebrity, materialism and competition. What would you do to win? Does what we risk determine what we value? Will the winner really take it all?

Game Show fuses game play, moral dilemmas and live cinema together in a critique of celebrity, materialism and competition. What would you do to win? Does what we risk determine what we value? Will the winner really take it all?

Wicked host Tristan Meecham has more swagger than his real-life counterparts, painted like a mannequin and dressed like a leather-clad ringmaster. Both demigod and everyman, his mask literally melts as the competition gets fiercer. Game Show playfully challenges the notion that artists should give something of themselves in their work.

The Age, Australia

You couldn’t get a bigger or more glittery work than the long-awaited Game Show… which delivered on its promise of high-reality farce with a healthy dose of explicit and implicit commentary on the pursuit of fame and material wealth, as well as challenging ideas around the agency of the ‘participant

Reel Time Magazine.

Beneath the showers of glitter, Game Show raises very pertinent questions about art, commodification and celebrity, asking what’s at stake in making work and interrogating how it’s consumed under capitalism. What’s more, it’s a helluva lot of fun.

The Age, Australia

Creative Team

Creators: Tristan Meecham with Bec Reid, Willoh S Weiland, Elizabeth Dunn, Martyn Coutts, Lara Thoms

Choreography and Recruitment: Bec Reid

Performers Tristan Meecham, Bec Reid, Lara Thoms, Elizabeth Dunn, Jon Campos, Jon Allingham

Video interviewees Georgie Meecham, Joan Meecham, Maurie Meecham, Roger Monk, Jess Murphy

Design Jonathon Oxlade

Branding & Web Design Chris More

Lighting Ben Shaw 

Assistant Designer Yvette Turnball 

Costume Maker Anna Macfarlane 

Production Management Emma O’Brien 

System Design & Operation Nick Roux 

Composer Nick Roux 

Production Assistant Bek Berger 

Design Intern Robyn McPherson 

Producer Freya Waterson (Insite Arts)

Project Partners