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Fleur Elise Noble: ROOMAN

A figure that is half-man, half-kangaroo is standing in a boat with Fleur Elise Nobel's unnamed character. They look like figures in a pop-up book, against a paper painted backdrop and vivid blue colour in the water. Their shadows are prevalent against the paper backdrop.

Welcome to the Barbican and this exciting annual staple of our genre-defying theatre and dance programme, the London International Mime Festival. We’re thrilled to be working alongside the festival’s directors Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig on this 2020 edition at the Barbican. Four extraordinary live performances in the Theatre and The Pit are joined by three American slapstick comedies from the 1910s and 20s in the cinema with live accompaniment by Guildhall School Jazz Musicians. The Olivier award-winning Belgian company Peeping Tom return with the final piece of their family trilogy, Child (Kind), focusing attention this time on the perspective of young people, and we welcome back Kiss & Cry Collective, also from Belgium, with Cold Blood, seven surprising stories performed by dancing hands, filmed live and transposed to a giant screen. From Australia, Fleur Elise Noble returns to the Barbican with ROOMAN, presented as a 3-dimensional story book about a woman dreaming of escape, and making their Barbican debut with Chimpanzee, Nick Lehane and his talented puppeteers tell the heart-breaking tale of our closest relatives abandoned by the human families that once fostered them.

Toni Racklin, Head of Theatre and Dance, Barbican

Fleur Elise Noble's multi-media story-telling enchanted audiences at the Mime Festival in 2012. Now we're delighted to partner with the Barbican in presenting her latest show, a magical tale about falling in love with a fantasy.

Unfolding like an immersive pop-up book, its staging features rich soundscape, projection, animation, puppetry, movement and highly unusual decor. It's the first of five exceptional productions and films that make up LIMF 2020 at the Barbican. We hope you will be transported by them all.

Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, LIMF directors

Performers & Creative team

Fleur Elise Noble Creator, Director, Designer, Dreamer, Dancer, Drawer, Animator, Performer, Puppet-maker and Projection Artist
Fleur Elise Noble and Daniel Fels Projected Performers
Missi Mel Pesa Sound Design
Niccolo Gallio Technical Manager and Operator
Tony Martin, Fleur Elise Noble and Anna Kastrissios Puppeteers
Insite Arts Producer
Zaachariaha Fielding, Sarah Reid, Tim Bennett, Peter Knight, Mal Webb, Missi Mel Pesa (AKA Melbient) and Opiuo Contributing Composers and Musicians
Tim Bennett and Isobel Knowles Animators
Bryony Anderson, Kasia Tons and Sara Yael/Lily Castel Costume Creators

Daniel Fels, Sarah Reid, Jack Ladd, Tina Torabi, Helen Smith, Alana Hoggart, Adam Forbes, Tim Bennett, Ruby Ladd, Clare McDonald, Tom Carlyon, Gabrielle New, Pierre Proske, Tony Martin, Mish Birch, Jack Tuathail, Jonathan Van Dujin, Matthijis Bill Rietveld, Falco Ara Macao, Marlin-Jack Melis, Emelia Bickerdike, Roy Chang and Yollana Shore Contributing Dancers

Thank you to Arts SA, Australia Council, Arts House, Coopers Malthouse Theatre, Windmill Theatre, Arts QLD, WOMADelaide, Mel Cantwell / Perth Theatre Company, Daniel Fels, Lucy Scott, Ruby Ladd, Jack Ladd, George the Man, Kasia Tons, John Feely, Adriana Navarro, Peter Stafford and Keez Duyveez

Artist's Statement

ROOMAN’s light-hearted beginnings evolved from a desire to create a show about ‘following your dreams’. I met Rooman (a half-man-half-kangaroo) in a dream. I then followed him into the desert for three months. This journey seeded the beginnings of the ROOMAN story.

ROOMAN is a very real story about falling in love with a fantasy. It’s a heart-warming, heart-breaking, visual-musical extravaganza about following your dreams and seeing what kind of a journey that can take you on. It’s about love, about life. It’s about losing everything and having no choice but to start again.

And why do I feel it is important to give these ideas a voice? Because these are common experiences that many people have to deal with at some point in their lives, often on their own. Quietly, ashamedly, people back away into the shadows and grapple with their demons. Some find light, some find support, but many don’t know how to carry on.

ROOMAN is about arriving at a place where one must face an ultimatum – to give up, or to wake up. It is an honest (though metaphorical) depiction of one person’s deepest vulnerabilities. It is an intensely personal and universal story.

I dream that this work will reach a wide audience and inspire meaningful dialogue around how one might endeavour to feel less alone in a time of need.

Fleur Elise Noble

Discover

photo of a person in the dark

Watch: London International Mime Festival 2020

For 2020, the 44th year of London’s annual festival of contemporary visual theatre, 10 overseas companies join 8 British groups, including 4 LIMF co-commissioned productions.

Biographies

Fleur Elise Noble – Creator, Director, Designer, Dreamer, Dancer, Drawer, Animator, Performer, Puppet-maker, Projection Artist

Fleur is a director, maker and performer. She works with the mediums of drawing, painting, sculpture, puppetry, costume, set design, animation, film, editing, projection, performance and dance to create art works, animated films and visual performances. ROOMAN is her second major production, and like her first, the story and physical material that she uses to tell it has been developed and refined over about five years.

Fleur has a background in visual arts, physical theatre and community work. She studied on full scholarships at art schools in Adelaide (Adelaide Central School of Art) and New York (New York Studio School). In 2008 she was a directing intern with Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre, after which she went on to perform in a number of dance/physical theatre productions. Over the years, Fleur has worked with many arts, theatre and multimedia professionals and has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards for her work.

Her most renowned work to date is her visual performance 2-Dimensional Life of Her, which was invited to perform at over 40 venues and festivals around the world, including; the 2012 London Mime Festival at the Barbican, the 2013 Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater in New York, as well as in LA, Brazil, Iran, South Korea and extensively throughout Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In 2011 2-Dimensional Life of Her was selected to represent Australia at the World Congress of Theatre for Young People. In 2010 Fleur won the Green Room Award for Video Design, and in 2013 she was awarded a prestigious Bessie (New York Dance and Theatre Award) for most Outstanding Visual Design.

Fleur also works as a workshop leader and media producer on the Sharing Stories Foundation’s Digital Storytelling Workshops – facilitating drawing, animation, film-making and projection projects with elders and young people in remote Indigenous communities. Her ongoing relationship with Indigenous peoples and their stories has deeply inspired her own practice.

In 2013 Fleur received an Arts SA Triennial Project Grant for the development of ROOMAN. The process of creating this work has involved collaborating with numerous musicians such as Sarah Reid, Zaachariaha Fielding, Tim Bennett, Peter Knight, Mal Webb and Missi Mel Pesa to develop the music/soundscape for ROOMAN. Over the years she has recruited a number of highly skilled dancers to perform in aspects of the production, along with with artists/costume designers such as Bryony Anderson (the mother of Rooman!), Sara Yael and Kasia Tons. Tim Bennett and Isobel Knowles also came on board to help create some magic in the animation department. Many others have contributed and supported the development of this project over the years.

This will be the first dance musical extravaganza in Fleur’s repertoire of creations.

 

Missi Mel Pesa – Sound Design, Composer and Musician

Fleur and I met through the Sharing Stories Foundation, creating new media sound design and animations collaboratively with children from remote Indigenous communities. We both loved working with the energy and raw talent of the children, and thrived on the organic nature of the work. Fleur and I discovered that we shared a unique creative chemistry as artists, which made it only natural for us to work together on ROOMAN.

My arts practice blurs the lines between cinematic sound design and musical composition by amplifying and experimenting with sounds I collect from nature. For ROOMAN, I collected sounds encountered through my work in the remote Australian country, creating an intimate and immersive ecology of place through sound design.

I am a Croatian-born Australian artist with a background in music composition and sound design for film, and once spent a year in Japan as a piano bar entertainer. I hold a Masters of Orchestration for Film and Television from the Berklee School of Music and a Graduate Diploma in Sound from the AFTRS, In 2014 I received a WIFT NSW Screen Music Mentorship Award through APRA.

I have music releases under the name Melbient through the label Arrival Sounds.

http://www.fleurelisenoble.com

http://insitearts.com.au/fleur-elise-noble/

https://www.facebook.com/insitearts/

 

Presented by the Barbican in association with London International Mime Festival.

Supported by Australia Council for the Arts, Arts SA, Arts Queensland and Windmill Theatre.

London International Mime Festival

Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA

+44 (0)20 7637 5661 [email protected] www.mimelondon.com

London International Mime Festival (LIMF) promotes contemporary visual theatre. Its productions have been nominated for and won Olivier Awards, and in 2017 the festival was honoured with the Empty Space - Peter Brook Special Achievement Award for its work over four decades. Founded in 1977, LIMF is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.

Festival Directors Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig
Production Manager Bill Deverson
Artists Manager Stephanie Brotchie
Press Representatives Anna Arthur PR [email protected]
Graphics & Website Iain Lanyon keanlanyon.com
Marketing Consultants Anne Dillow, Richard Fitzmaurice mobius industries.com

London International Mime Festival 2020 gratefully acknowledges co-operation / financial support from: Arts Council England; Institut français as part of its En Scène programme; Arts Queensland; Arts South Australia; Cheryl Henson; Jim Henson Foundation

The Pit