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Head-Langue Theatre
Past productions Français  



Les Anges de l'Enfer
(Angels of the underground)

"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

                            alexfallenbunnypersonagemanujulie                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   


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Les Anges De l’Enfer

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


les anges affiche








 


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

Video extracts EGG

Egg
 
Voyage:One Woman's Odyssey in a Bath Tub

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


Voyage

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


histoire de l'oeuf

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 and Nydia Hetherington 
Music: Sylvestre Balzard



Goblin Market

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