Category: Mime

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Guillaume Pige

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We sat down with Guillaume Pige, whose newest show BIRTH with Theatre Re, continues its tour on the 13th of May until the 12th of June.

Theatre Re is known for creating strikingly poignant and thought-provoking performances. How would you describe the artistic vision that drives the company’s work, especially when exploring such delicate themes like pregnancy loss and fertility? 

We strive to create world class, deeply moving non-verbal productions about universal human challenges and the fragility of life. The subject matters that we engage with in our shows are often quite intimate, taboo and difficult to talk about. However, our strength is that we don’t start with that. We tend start with play, with actions, with objects… And it’s from the doing that little by little a theme emerge. I really believe that this way of working is what is allowing us to deal sensitively with such difficult themes.

With your collaborations with experts from various fields like science and philosophy, how do you approach blending these disciplines into the artistic process?

I don’t think we ‘blend’ these disciplines within our process, but I think we respond to the various stimuli that they bring our way. In ‘The Nature of Forgetting’, we have used scientific principles to create initial tasks that performers and devisers would need to embody. In ‘BIRTH’, philosophical reflections on the non-cyclical nature of time has led us to change the shape and colours of birthday cakes to mark the recurring birthdays of the same character. 

In BIRTH, you explore the often-underrepresented experience of pregnancy loss. What was the inspiration behind this show, and why did you feel it was important to bring this topic to the stage?

At the very beginning of our research, we did not know that we would be exploring pregnancy loss as part of this project. We wanted to explore the world of secrets within families. We all drew our family trees and shared it with the rest of the team. The aim was to unravel parallels between our own lives and the lives of our ancestors, and how issues or traumas might have been subconsciously passed down from one generation to the next. It allowed us to identify similarities within our families… One of them was pregnancy loss and how it was always kept a secret. 

To explore the subject of pregnancy loss specifically, we first collaborated with Anyone Everymum (organisation supporting women and families in their journey through birth). Along with sharing their expertise, knowledge and experiences, they took us through the various steps they use in their sessions with women. Many discoveries made during these workshops were then developed and worked into the piece. Some of them are invisible, others led to the devising of full scenes. This collaboration also helped us to create the right atmosphere around the work and helped guide our research. 

Later in the process we also engaged with Aching Arms (nationwide baby loss charity run by a group of bereaved parents) and were able to get an insight into what it means to lose a life. Their feedback on the work helped us ensure that our piece was a faithful representation of what some parents go through without being patronising nor sentimental.

In making Bluebelle accessible to d/Deaf audiences without the need for BSL interpretation, how did you ensure that the production’s visual and physical elements could communicate effectively to all viewers?

Developing access for our work is something that started ‘by chance’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with BIRTH back in 2019. Many d/Deaf artists and audiences came to see the show at the festival that year, and were very appreciative and supportive of the work. The piece was so visual that it did not need BSL interpretation to be accessible. This is something we were keen to carry-on and make conscious choices about moving forward.

When it came to developing ‘Bluebelle’, we collaborated with Deaf and Visual Vernacular Artists. This ensured that ‘Bluebelle’ could be accessible without the need for BSL interpretation, but it also enabled us to challenge our physical and visual style, as well as our way to communicate without words. It has also showed us that there is so much more we could do to make our work fully accessible, starting with more BSL interpreted workshops.

Developing ‘Bluebelle’ was the beginning a long term collaboration with Performance Artist and Creative Consultant Jonny Cotsen. Since then, we have made another show with Jonny called ‘Moments’ and Jonny has also joined our Advisor Group. 

What has been the most rewarding aspect of taking Theatre Re’s shows to international audiences, and how does performing in different cultural contexts influence your work?

The most exciting moment for me is when we come out at the end of a show and meet the audience to hear their responses, and how our work has resonated with them. It’s fascinating to see that no matter where we are in the world, people will tend to connect with our work in very similar ways. It means that regardless of where you are from and what language you speak, we are all the same. We are all humans with the same desires and the same fears. I find that beautiful and quite moving. 

Having the privilege to perform in different countries really makes me want to stay for a little bit longer in each location and collaborate with artists there to make something. That’s our next step!

The UK tour for BIRTH continues in Storyhouse, Chester on the 13th of May. Tickets are available here.

Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic

REVIEW:Dimanche by Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

a surreal yet gentle puppetry-storytelling that melds absurd humour and poignant tragedy

As part of MimeLondon, Compagnie Focus & Chaliwaté’s Dimanche is a surreal yet tender meditation on climate change and environmental protection. It is a tour de force of puppetry, where meticulously crafted, lifelike puppets, including polar bear, migratory bird, and an elderly lady, serve not only as characters but also as allegories for our warming world. With a “rule-of-three” comedy structure fused with Lecoqesque movements, the performance interweaves absurdity and tragedy with its alarming prophecy.

The opening scene features three journalists (or scientists) driving to the Arctic Circle to observe and shoot its ecosystem. You might never imagine that a physical mime can actually realise the cinematic sequence from a long shot, a medium and eventually a close-up. The puppeteer-performers transform their bodies into snow-capped mountains for model cars to navigate. Gradually, a larger-scale model enters the scene, and ultimately, the “camera” shifts to reveal the trio inside the vehicle, driving and eating. Equally breathtaking is the auditory precision and unrivalled delicacy of sound technology on display (Brice Cannavo). Together with the scene sequence, you may discern the slight volume differences of the background music (Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”)

As the story goes on, one journalist accidentally plummets through fissures in ice and unfortunately loses his life. A footage (Tristan Galand) seamlessly links this human tragedy with the animal world, where a polar bear cub forever separates from her mother by melting ice. The puppetry is so vivid that even with the puppeteer in view, you momentarily forget they are mere puppets, but view them as real.

Global warming affects humans as well. We then witness a family battling against heat, where a couple uses an array of electric fans to cool themselves, and an ice bucket offers their puppet-portrayed mother a refreshing reprieve. Under endless heatwaves, accompanied by an operatic soundscape, their furniture gradually and mysteriously melts in a surreal, almost magical manner, like a Dali painting. Suddenly, the old lady loses her life out of a shocking electrocution when operating on a floor lamp, which functions abnormally due to relentless and unstable weather condition. The rule of three applies again, only this time in a tragic way.

This darkly comic yet deeply tragic tableau sets the tone for what is to come. A tornado deprives another journalist’s life, and a migratory bird is forced to crash through the window of the bereaved family, who in turn absurdly roasts the bird for a feast. With nice dress, glasses of wine and an eternally-blown-out candle, the stupid couple fails to enjoy the bird as the hurricane blows everything away. A tsunami devours the last journalist as well as the family’s sleeping patriarch, who are now drifting in the water, absurdly co-existing alongside with sharks, jellyfishes and his kitchenware. An alarm endeavours to wake him up, but ultimately fails.

In the last scene, writers, directors and major performers Julie Tenret, Sicaire Durieux, and Sandrine Heyraud display some mercy, warm emotion and a glimmer of hope. Jellyfish, a symbol of earth’s emerging, thriving prosperity even without human species, is exquisitely performed through hand puppetry. This underwater scene, bathed in striking black with an eerie, almost mystical quality, showcases excellent precision from lighting (Guillaume Toussaint Fromentin), enabling the puppeteers to remain unseen.

Finishing with the last journalist surviving the tsunami in a lifeboat and clumsily fishing out the family’s water bottle, Dimanche delivers a gentle storytelling. In a world often bombarded by overt propaganda and self-important declarations, the performance opts for a quiet, reflective tone that speaks both to the heart and to the mind. The interplay between the animals’ domestic warmth and the stark, surreal imagery of numb and indifferent humanity compels us to ask: How much time do we have left? Just like the trio team’s camera, the battery is already low.

Image credits: Christophe Raynaudde Lage

REVIEW: Moby Dick

Published on by rachelarmitage77Leave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

A mesmerising ode to the eerie, uncanny, and oceanic

‘There are three types of men: the dead, the living, and those who go to sea,’ declares Ishmael in the opening of Plexus Polaire’s mystical production of Moby Dick. Directed by Yngvild Aspeli and performed in one act by an ensemble of actors, musicians, puppeteers, and fifty puppets, Moby Dick captures this third category of being, presenting the experience of the sea as otherworldly, terrifying, monstrous, and intensely human. 

Puppetry, creating animate beings both human and not, controlled by people glimpsed in the shadows, who also move in a way that is both human and yet gracefully other, is the perfect medium for presenting an existence that is neither living nor dead. Moby Dick, in Plexus Polaire’s version, is less an epic narrative and more a fascinating, eerie exploration of what being at sea does to the body and psyche.

Whilst most of the whalers appear as puppets, it is the towering Captain Ahab who is the star of the show. Standing at about 8 feet tall, with a booming voice and surrounded by skull-masked puppeteers who evoke psychological torment, he has a mythical quality, uncanny and other than human. The puppetry of all the sailors is astonishingly skilful, particularly when the puppeteers were also agents in the action on stage. The human bodies became taunting phantoms to Ahab’s nonhuman body, with their skull faces alluding to a slippage between life and death. This confronted the audience with the human body as shadowy and other. What is so frightening about the sea, this production says, is that it presents shadows as our true essence. The sea disorientates the body and exposes the human’s obsessive cruelty. There is a core environmental message here, too, that it is dangerous to perceive ourselves as disconnected from nature. In failing to identify our own otherness with that of the sea, we destroy not just innocent animals, but ourselves, too.

Dazzling sequences came slightly at the expense of storytelling, which sometimes felt rushed or confusing. But I didn’t mind this as this Moby Dick was more an immersive, unsettling atmosphere than it was a narrative piece. Though the story was abridged, this production is not trying to replace the novel, rather it offers something compelling and provocative in its own right.

However, there were some striking moments in which non-verbal movement and sound took over from Ishmael’s narration. A moving whaling sequence was such an example, presenting the battle between small harpooning boats and a big, gentle whale. The whale’s gruesome dismemberment was depicted by a harrowing unravelling of the puppet, leaving its baby motherless.

The technical and design elements of the production worked brilliantly to enhance the effects of the puppetry. Elisabeth Holager Lund’s set, cleverly evoking both whale bones and a ship’s hull, gave the space a great depth and height, generally leaving its mechanisms bare for the audience to see. Keeping the puppeteers largely in shadow, Xavier Lescat and Vincent Loubière’s lighting was generally very dark, with high contrast focus on human subjects giving the impression of a dark expanse of the sea beyond. A highlight was a beautiful whale tail, illuminated incandescent blue, enhancing the undulating flow of the puppetry.

At times I felt there was a slight overreliance on videos of action, rather than presenting action onstage, but nevertheless David Lefard-Ruffet’s video projections did well to conjure a vivid, swirling sea. Moreau’s costume design was especially effective in enhancing the sense of being between living and dead, with flowing robes blurring the boundaries between humans, puppets, and waves. All combined, it was like watching both magic and its mechanisms. Seeing the ways the set, costumes, and puppets worked only served to enhance the effect of uncanny wonder, presenting both the supernatural and humanity of Moby Dick. 

A special mention should go to the trio of fantastic musicians who sang haunting whaling songs and scored the play with live percussion, bass, and guitar, combined with pre-recorded effects (the mixing was notably accomplished, too). At time they were like foley artists, creating shimmering sound effects, and at others they infused the play with electrifying rhythmic energy. Singing dominated the production more so than dialogue, so their ethereal voices were integral to the enchanting soundscape.

In all, Moby Dick is a stunning and contemplative spectacle, a sure triumph. 

Moby Dick is presented by the Barbican in association with Mime London.

REVIEW: La Manékine

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

MimeLondon kicks off this January with a bang by means of La Manékine, a haunting yet hopeful tale told with rapturous skill by French theatre company La Pendue 

La Manékine, based on the Brothers Grimm short story The Girl Without Hands, tells the chilling tale of a young girl who is mistakenly sold off to the Devil by her father. She takes off on an adventurous yet twisted journey filled with unexpected characters and poignant metaphors. While the story itself is incredibly engaging, the real stars of the show are the incredible skills displayed by the company, cast, and creative crew of La Pendue. Hailing from Grenoble, France, La Pendue enlist a variety of puppets to tell this story – hand puppets, carried puppets, masks, and more – that not only give the piece its unique and delectable quality, but also provide a wholly unanticipated performance. The aesthetic employed by La Pendue for this piece is exquisitely fitting for an allegorical, old-timey tale that evokes the Everyman plays of yore. The production is shrouded in darkness, the backdrop displays soft, grainy images in black and white, costumes, dark and drapey, do not distract from the artistry of the puppets. The puppets themselves are a sight to behold, in their myriad of forms. Estelle Charlier, the mind behind the piece’s artistic direction, puppets, and masks, as well as one of the two performers onstage, is an incredible theatrical-auteur of this work. In addition to Charlier, Anthony Lopez, Andi Luchsinger, Martin Kaspar Orkestar, Romuald Collinet, are the skilled artists behind the creation of these sets and costumes; their work is vital to the brilliance of this piece.   

Estelle Charlier and Martin Kaspar Orkestar are the sole performers onstage for the duration of the production. Martin Kaspar Orkestar, who doubles as the mind behind the music of the production, is a literal one-man band. He sits holding an accordion, a clarinet, surrounded by multiple drums, and a few other instruments that seem to appear like magic. His music throughout the piece is itself magical, shimmering, hopeful yet seeped in horror, setting the chilling tone that drives the narrative forward. Martin Kaspar Orkestar’s ability to play a mind-boggling number of instruments quite literally simultaneously with such deft skill was incomprehensible in the best way. He sings too. Very well.

Kaspar Orkestar works in exciting collaboration with Estelle Charlier, who plays most of the piece’s characters. Charlier shifts between characters with remarkable ease and clarity, swapping out puppets and masks in a flash, and shifting tone and physicality with the flourish of a puppeteering-magician. Her ability to breathe life and personality into various kinds of puppets with an incredible sight to behold. 

La Manékine gripped the audience from the very onset and left us desperate for more. While their run at MimeLondon may be sold out, you would be remiss not to keep an eye out for the soonest return of this amazing production.