A UK Premiere
“2 performers, 400 toys and 60 minutes of surreal and very funny mayhem”
Enter the world of Mireille & Mathieu (is it a junk shop, a car boot sale or a children’s playroom?) for 60 minutes of mayhem where nothing is logical but it all makes sense. A kaleidoscope of belly-laugh moments which include: a doll’s date with a difference that gives ‘passion’ a whole new meaning; punk kids sharing a cot with hilarious and disastrous consequences; and the amazing dancing senorita who swallows an admirer up her skirt…
Totally original, fast and furious and very, very funny.
ARM (meaning poor) is visual theatre, celebrating the imagination. On a flea-market Mireille & Mathieu seem to be fooling around, but the objects they pick up hold stories. These stories, sometimes sweet and full of poetry, but often cruel and comical, follow each other in a playful high tempo style based on a stream of associative imagination that is characteristic of Mireille & Mathieu’s work.
“Both protagonists deliver first class work with infinite enthusiasm and enormous energy…The world, a flea-market, varied and unsorted, tasteless next to tasteful, valuable next to worthless. Simply great.” Emder Zeitung*
“What seems at first to be an ill-assorted collection of trash becomes a wonderful world in the hands of Mireille & Mathieu.” NRC Handelsblad*
“We use every doll and toy you ever dumped, the puppets and objects we play with all come from flea-markets. We try to make a statement about the re-use or recycling of objects in a world where everything is mass-produced to be used only once and be thrown away afterwards. This is the underlying theme of all our performances.”
“Due to this way of creating we were once called ‘the punk of puppet theatre’ by more traditional orientated colleagues - a label we cherish.”
Mireille & Mathieu are Kathleen Wijnen and Erik Bassier (joined by Esther Maas in 2003) the two met whilst studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. As a photographer (Kathleen) and a graphic artist (Erik) they gradually got involved in theatre projects, resulting in their first collaboration a short puppet act in 1996 and Mireille & Mathieu was born.
Since then Mireille & Mathieu have made 5 pieces of theatre: Zit! (1997), How do Voodoo (1999), Arm (2001), leg@ron (of wa?) (2003) and recently Schaam (2006-7).
ARM was originally made as a result of a request from the Het Huis van Alijn Museum (A museum of Folk Art in Ghent, Belguim) for Mireille & Mathieu to devise a performance featuring garden gnomes, as the museum was featuring exhibitions of gnome-related subjects that year. “We made a show with anything we found on flea-markets, including a few gnomes, who still come peeping into the show now and then…”
Presented in association with Radiator:
In the very beginning it was Radiator…popping up in community centres, out of the way theatres, dingy dives and other unlikely locations bringing off-the-wall performances, experimental theatre, alternative cabaret and much more to a bewildered but appreciative Manchester audience. The brainchild of Jeremy Shine (founding member of greenroom now Manchester International Arts & Streets Ahead.) Radiator grew and grew until in 1983, like a butterfly, it broke its chrysalis and greenroom emerged (founded by Jeremy with Stella Hall). And now Radiator is Back for just one weekend as Jeremy forsakes the streets to bring Mireille & Mathieu to represent the new wave of alternative arts to celebrate 25 years of greenroom.
*Please note that these press quotes have been translated from the French originals.
Please note that this performance is deemed not suitable for people under 12.
