Spill your Guts at steirischer herbst

Spill your Guts is a two-handed waiting room ventriloquist show blending ventriloquism, comedy, and musical elements, in which Hendrik Quast and his dummy spiral into chaos dealing with a chronic, invisible, and inflammatory force. Beginning as a classic ventriloquism act, Quast argues with his puppet about shame, tales of undigested leftovers, the medical system, and stories of illness rooted in his own experience with chronic inflammatory bowel disease. The work asks who holds interpretive control over the sick body — medicine, the patient, or the disease itself. The performance is based on a translation by David Tushingham and has been adapted into English for the first time.