Company of Angels – The Story of Charlotte Salomon
Horse and Bamboo Theatre Company

Riverbank Arts Centre Newbridge
Wednesday 17th September
8.00pm (Tickets €10 / €8)
Booking 045 448333
boxoffice@riverbank.ie

Company of Angels – The Story of Charlotte Salomon, is touring throughout the UK and Ireland throughout 2003, stopping at Newbridge for a performance at the Riverbank on September 17th.

Charlotte Salomon was a German Jewish woman, a painter, born in Berlin in 1917. She was put to death just 26 years later in Birkenau concentration camp. In the last year of her life, while in exile in the South of France, she produced an amazing series of 765 gouache paintings. Whilst these provide an intensely personal account of her life, with its complex relationships, they are also deeply rooted in and affected by, the political environment of that era – the gruesome outcome of which was, at that time, yet unknown. The paintings provide us with one of the most penetrating visual records of an individual life under the Nazi regime.

Horse and Bamboo has used this amazingly rich material to open up the work of this extraordinary artist to a wider audience. The Company has not recreated her work, titled by Charlotte as “Leben oder Theatre”, - “Life or Theatre”, but has created a visual and musical world bringing to life the world of the paintings as a piece of theatre within the context of what we know of Charlotte’s history and the politics of the era. The piece is told using masks, puppetry in various forms, digital projection and music.

Horse and Bamboo Theatre is the leading mask and puppet theatre company in the UK. It has been making a unique, intelligent and distinctive visual theatre for almost 25 years. Founded in 1978 by Bob Frith, it is based in Lancashire, UK. The Company has created over 80 original projections, including extensive tours of the UK and the continent. It also runs local arts projects at the Horse and Bamboo Centre; an influential programme of work for people with special needs and it organises various training courses and workshops.

For further information, please contact Catríona or Gráinne on
(045) 448314/5 or by e-mail at artscentre@riverbank.ie