About this Event
In 1976, British mime-clown Nola Rae suggested to Joseph Seelig, then manager of London's Cockpit Theatre that they create a festival of visual and physical theatre like those that she knew existed on the continent. Originally intended as a means of attracting media attention and thus bigger audiences for these styles of performance, the first festival in 1977 was a huge success and LIMF has now been running for 44 years, becoming a post-Christmas tradition, the first theatre ‘event' of the New Year. Nola and Joseph will talk about how it all began.
NOLA RAE M.B.E. was born in Sydney. She migrated with her family to London in 1963 and trained at the Royal Ballet School. She danced professionally in Sweden and at the Tivoli Pantomime Theatre in Denmark before studying mime with Marcel Marceau in Paris. She co-founded French-based International Research Troupe Kiss, and Friends Roadshow with Jango Edwards, and was a member of the Bristol Old Vic Company. In 1974 she founded her company London Mime Theatre with Matthew Ridout. Since her first solo performance at the Festival du Monde in 1976 she has created twelve full-length shows and toured to more than sixty countries worldwide. She is also in demand as a director, acclaimed for turning classic tragedies into clown theatre. She has been the subject of two television documentaries and has received a Total Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award, the Charlie Rivel Award for Clowning, and was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in the United States in 2000.
JOSEPH SEELIG O.B.E. co-founded international arts management company, Hetherington Seelig in 1980, after seven years as manager/programmer of The Cockpit Theatre. He has been an artists’ manager, artistic adviser, theatre and opera producer, and been closely involved with various other festivals throughout his career including the Hong Kong Arts Festival as international programme director and the New Zealand Festival as artistic director. He is chair of Birmingham’s BE Festival and co-founder/chair of HQ Theatres Trust.
This talk will also be available with Closed Captions on YouTube
Nola’s appearances in London International Mime Festival:
1977 Some Great Fools from History, The Cockpit
1978 Some Great Fools from History, The Cockpit
1980 Some Great Fools from History, Jacksons Lane
1981 Prime Cuts + Futurefool, The Cockpit & Place Theatre
1982 Double-Up (with Chris Harris), Place Theatre
1984 Upper Cuts, Shaw Theatre
1985 The Urge, Shaw Theatre
1987 Mime Gala, The Bloomsbury Theatre
1988 Bottom of the Garden & Other Twisted Tales, Place Theatre
1991 Elizabeth’s Last Stand, Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room
1994 And the Ship Sailed On (with Sally Owen), Battersea Arts Centre
1999 Mozart Preposteroso! The Pleasance Theatre
2005 Exit Napoleon… Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room
2008 Mozart Preposteroso! Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room
Event Venue
Online
GBP 0.00