"Les
Anges de l'Enfer is theatre that bursts with universally-recognisable
tales of everyday life, yet doesn't clutter the mind with
average-daily-human-experience no-shit-Sherlock dialogue.
Head-Langue
Theatre dramatises life on the Paris Metro in non-verbal physical
theatre and succeeds in making the airwaves fizz with the inaudible
chattering frequencies of people's inner lives" The fringe report, August 2008
"In
two words: utterly charming.....we shall just sit on the Tube and dream
of this charming French theatre company bringing this great mime show
back to London..." The Londonist, August 2008
Les
Anges De l’Enfer (Angels of the underground) is a visual quest which
explores the subterrainian life of the Paris Metro. Five performers
transform the everyday into a beautifully grotesque masquerade through
physicality, masks, burlesque buffoonary, poetic play and the
lambada! We present extra-ordinary ordinary characters. We
examin
their dreams and their harsh realities. Les Anges de L’enfer is a
textless world, which is far from silent. It reflects the profound
hustle and bustle that words cannot reach. The words only come when
there is nothing left to say.
We are
strangers huddled together
in the dirt and noise and stink.
Our protector: the tin can in which we jostle for arm space. Our
individual lives scurry secretively around our heads like the rats
scurrying in the dark under the belly of the beltching people carrying
metal dragon. We hold onto our secrets, clasping at them like the bags
we hold tightly at our chests. We try hard not to touch, not to see our
fellow inhabitants of the moving machine, but knees are brushed and
angry looks are thrown. At last the sound of the doors closing. We hold
our breaths so as to not breath in each others already breathed in air.
We are hurtled into the dark under the city, under our real lives. We
journey together going from one tiled platform to the next, an oblong
of light, of hope in the obscure unreality of this crowded solitude .
Finally it is our turn to be released. We spill out hurrying upwards,
searching for breath again. But what of
the others?
The people who live in the dark? The passengers, the drivers, the
drunks, the players of music, the screamers and the silent starerers?
The sleepers on the platforms? These are the angels of the underground,
sweeping daily, briefly through our lives. Les Anges de l’Enfer opens
up this hidden underworld like a child lifting the roof off a dolls
house and invites you to join us on our journey into the secret lives
of these ordinary angels.
Le métro est un
cauchemar, un
rêve, c’est l’enfer et nous ? Nous sommes des anges de l’enfer.
Conceived and directed by
Nydia
Hetherington
Created by the company:
Emanuel Aubonnet
Julie Bernard
Alexandre Certain
Nydia Hetherington
Nicolas Rager Costumes
benoîte micard stage
manager Rachel
Dupuis Music Sylvestre
Balazard
EGG
A
chaotic voyage through our most symbiotic and perhaps most intimate
relationship. A relationship often seen as ‘sacred’. A very
tall woman plays a small accordion. A second woman is released from her
shell and we are taken to a world of discovery. The Egg is a
very visual and exciting exploration of the mother / daughter
relationship. The
audience follows the two performers through their various tales and
journeys. Looking for the "answer", they discover fairy story
worlds.
In this universe, the abstract is mixed with reality, mime and
physicality is mixed with word and clowning is mixed with Nigella
Lawson (The famous English ‘domestic Goddess’).
Simone De Beauvoir Famously said “On ne naît pas
femme, on le devient” (We are not born a woman, we learn to
become one) In this play we take de Beauvoir’s statement as a
starting point and look at how the mother / daughter relationship
effects this ‘becoming’ a woman. We look at how the
symbiotic relationship, from the beginnings of modern society, passes
on an inherited idea of womanhood.
Performed
in 2007 at Especes Jemappes in Paris
Created
and directed by:
Nydia Hetherington Performed
by: Sabine Dupuis and Nydia Hetherington Costumes: Benoite
Micard Stage Manager: Rachel
Dupuis Graphic
Design: Sandra Nichols Music:
Sylvestre Balazard
From the story of creation to Ellen Macarthur,
Voyage is a highly visual exploration of the relationship between women
and the sea throughout history. Coupled with the idea of
‘journeying’, the ‘voyage’ begins with an ancient creation myth : woman
is creator of all things, the sea becoming the embodiment of her power,
the beginning of a powerful and sometimes destructive relationship.
This is also the journey of ‘every woman’, the voyage through life, the
eternal search for the utopian but invisible ‘Hilda –Land’, ultimately
unreachable. Fairytale worlds for a
displaced 21st century.
Performed in 2006 at Divadlo Nablizko, Prague
as part of the Prague Festival Fringe
Created,directed
and
performed by: Nydia Hetherington Music: Sylvestre
Balzard Stage Manager: Rachel
Dupuis Driver /
general assistant: Sabine Dupuis
Stories From The Egg
An
original creation and a first look at the mother/daughter relationship.
In this production we started to explore working with objects and began
work on a subject we would later come back to and develop in
more
detail.
This piece played in Paris in 2004 and was
selected for the
Prague Fringe Festival 2005.
Conceived
by: Nydia Hetherington Created by the company Performed
by: Nydia Hetherington and Simone Bendix Music: Sylvestre
Balazard
The Goblin Market
A show of
mask, music and magic, of lust and envy.
This
production used Christina Rossetti’s poem as a starting point. The
piece explored the themes laid out by Rossetti of ramily relationships,
the idea of duty, of sexuality and affirmation of ‘self’. The four
performers used original full and half masks in this very victorian
tale.
Performed
in Paris and in the
suburbs of paris 2002/2003.
Conceived
by: Nydia Hetherington Created by the company Performed
by:Mariae Smiarowski, Regis Virot andNydia Hetherington Music: Sylvestre
Balzard