The Company
Cast
Actors and puppeteers Alice Chéné, Daniel Collados, Olmo Hidalgo, Scott Koehler, Maja Kunsic, Laëtitia Labre and Julian Spooner
Musicians Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen, Guro Skumsnes Moe and Havard Skaset
Creative Team
Director Yngvild Aspeli
Puppet Makers Polina Borisova, Yngvild Aspeli, Manon Dublanc, Sébastien Puech, Elise Nicod
Set Designer Elisabeth Holager Lund
Lighting Designers Xavier Lescat and Vincent Loubière
Video Designer David Lejard-Ruffet
Costume Designer Benjamin Moreau
Lighting Technicians Vincent Loubière and Marine David
Production Manager Simon Bird
Video Technicians Hugo Masson, Pierre Hubert and Emilie Delforce
Sound Technicians Raphaël Barani, Simon Masson and Damien Ory
Stage Technicians Benjamin Dupuis, Xavier Lescat and Margot Boche
Assistant Director (on tour) Benoît Segui
Assistant Director (in rehearsals) Pierre Tual
Dramaturg Pauline Thimonnier
Production Director and Tour Booking Claire Costa
Administration Anne-Laure Doucet and Gaedig Bonabesse
Producer Noémie Jorez
This is the company performing at the Barbican. The full ensemble is listed on the Moby Dick page.
Event information
Age guidance: 12+
Running time: 85 minutes, no interval
The production contains a depiction of whaling.
Performed in English
Post-show talk
Fri 24 Jan
Facilitated by Sue Buckmaster
Free to same-day ticket holders. BSL-interpreted.
Audio-described performance
Fri 24 Jan
Touch tour at 5.45–6.15pm
Presented by the Barbican
Supported by the Institut français du Royaume-Uni and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in London.
Photography: Christophe Raynaud de Lage
Director's note
My grandfather was a sailor. He had a naked woman tattooed on his upper arm, and I remember his smell – of tar and tobacco. He came from an island on the west-coast of Norway, in a tiny harbour filled with foreign ships and languages, fishermen, sailors and children waiting for fathers who never came home from the sea. A landscape of wind, vast ocean and women looking out at the horizon. Weathered faces, sore hands. And churches with boats hanging from the ceiling in the hope of protection.
My ancestors were buried in Portuguese soil, because the churchyard on this island didn’t have enough earth to bury their own dead. I like how the sea somehow draws invisible lines between the different corners of the world, how it creates points of connection. How, facing this force of nature, we are all the same.
And no-one captures the battle between man and nature like Herman Melville in Moby Dick. An ancient white whale, a captain steering his ship into destruction and the inner storms of the human heart. Moby Dick is the tale of a whaling expedition, but also the story of an obsession or an investigation into the unexplained mysteries of life. To quote Melville, ‘it is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all’.
So, with seven actors, fifty puppets, video-projections, a drowned orchestra and a whale-sized whale, Plexus Polaire have created a visual adaptation of this wonderful beast of a book.
by Yngvild Aspeli
The making of Moby Dick
Yngvild Aspeli looks back on an unprecedented year for the world, which Plexus Polaire experienced through the prism of Moby Dick.
March, 2020. We are finally working on the first rehearsals of Moby Dick at Figurteatret i Nordland, and an international team of about 25 people will soon be meeting in Stamsund in northern Norway. It is the most dizzying project we have ever undertaken and we have been working tirelessly on its production for a few years. Herman Melville's Moby Dick is not a small novel to tackle, and with a premiere announced at the Avignon Festival in July that year, I was ready for the challenge. Then came the coronavirus.
The underlying currents and themes of Melville’s novel suddenly resurfaced. Whale or virus. Nature always has the last word. Despite our careful planning, I was completely unprepared for what it would mean to make this Moby Dick in the middle of a pandemic. The human madness I was so concerned about in the novel suddenly became very real.
With crew members living in Spain, Denmark, France, Estonia, Slovenia and Norway, we were quickly stymied by the logistics around disrupted travel, closed borders and different quarantine rules in the respective countries.
As performing artists, we depend on making long-term plans to secure jobs and incomes. To put it mildly, it was stormy to navigate a sea of missing and constantly changing information, with no guarantees for the future, and therefore no way to give our crew clear answers.
We followed the strategies of the different countries. Created health protocols. Did Covid tests and quarantines. Worked to ensure the health, safety, employment and income of a creative team of 25 people. It was a complicated balancing act – financially, morally and philosophically – in order to accommodate the personal feelings of each person, while taking care of the needs of the group.
We asked ourselves whether it was worth it and whether it was right to continue. We made plans and changed plans, then made new plans that were cancelled. We confronted systems and perspectives that did not correspond to our situation, to our reality.
We were confronted with the perception that our profession was not considered essential. We had to ask ourselves whether culture really seems like an elite which is disconnected from our society. We considered cancelling everything. We asked ourselves if we really wanted to do all this, if persisting and persevering was not, as the Norwegians say, being the woman against the current, the human being against the storm. We asked ourselves whether to continue or to give up.
But to make and maintain a community, human beings need discussions, unity and social gatherings to feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Art and culture are intimately linked to our ability to communicate, analyse and understand what we are experiencing. They are an integral part of the basic principles on which our society is built. Covid taught us that we are extremely good at adapting and finding solutions. If we really want to, we can do it. Giving up is not a solution. We have no choice but to continue. We must adapt, change, do things differently – but we cannot give up. If we want to continue doing our job, we have to fight for it, show that it is possible and that what we do makes sense.
So, despite heavy pressure and around 70 performances cancelled, it was nothing short of a small miracle and a lot of work from our great team on, behind and around the stage that enabled us to protect this show. To quote Herman Melville's Moby Dick, my main reference through that Covid year: ‘I try everything, I achieve what I can.'
Biographies
About MimeLondon
MimeLondon is a curatorial project created by Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, directors of London International Mime Festival (LIMF), which ended in 2023 after five decades of influential success. It supports occasional seasons of contemporary visual theatre, in collaboration with different partner venues.
Continuing its valued, long-standing relationship with the Barbican as its principal venue, this second series features seven productions new to London. A series of workshops based in physical, visual and puppetry theatre also takes place during the same period, together with the online screening of an award-winning short film, The Last Show, documenting the final edition of LIMF and containing interviews with many of the personalities involved in its history.
Find out more at MimeLondon.com
From the Barbican
Barbican Centre Board
Chair
Sir William Russell
Deputy Chair
Tijs Broeke
Deputy Chair
Tobi Ruth Adebekun
Board Members
Randall Anderson, Munsur Ali, Michael Asante MBE, Stephen Bediako OBE, Farmida Bi CBE, Zulum Elumogo, Jaspreet Hodgson, Nicholas Lyons, Mark Page, Anett Rideg, Jens Riegelsberger, Jane Roscoe, Despina Tsatsas, Irem Yerdelen
Clerk to the Board
John Cater and Kate Doidge
Barbican Centre Trust Chair
Farmida Bi CBE
Vice Chair
Robert Glick OBE
Trustees
Stephanie Camu, Tony Chambers, Cas Donald, David Kapur, Ann Kenrick, Kendall Langford, Sir William Russell, Sian Westerman
Directors
Chief Executive Officer (Interim)
David Farnsworth
Deputy CEO (Interim)
Ali Mirza
Director of Development
Natasha Harris
Head of Finance & Business Administration
Sarah Wall
Director for Buildings & Renewal
Dr Philippa Simpson
Director of Commercial
Jackie Boughton
Director for Audiences
Beau Vigushin
Director for Arts and Participation
Devyani Saltzman
Executive Assistant to CEO
Hannah Hoban
Theatre Department
Head of Theatre and Dance
Toni Racklin
Senior Production Manager
Simon Bourne
Producers
Liz Eddy, Jill Shelley, Fiona Stewart
Assistant Producers
Mrinmoyee Roy, Mali Siloko, Tom Titherington
Production Managers
Jamie Maisey, Lee Tasker
Technical Managers
Steve Daly, Jane Dickerson, Nik Kennedy, Martin Morgan, Stevie Porter
Stage Managers
Lucinda Hamlin, Charlotte Oliver
Technical Supervisors
James Breedon, Charlie Mann, Josh Massey, Matt Nelson, Adam Parrott, Lawrence Sills, Chris Wilby
Technicians
Kendell Foster, David Kennard, Burcham Johnson, Bart Kuta, Christian Lyons, Kieran Poynter, Fred Riding, Fede Spada, Matt Turnbull
PA to Head of Theatre
David Green
Production Administrator
Caroline Hall
Production Assistant
Ashley Panton
Stage Door
Julian Fox, aLbi Gravener
Creative Collaboration
Head of Creative Collaboration
Karena Johnson
Senior Producer for Learning and Participation
Oluwatoyin Odunsi
Senior Manager
Sarah Mangan
Producer
Josie Dick
Assistant Producer
Carmen Okome
Marketing Department
Head of Marketing
Jackie Ellis
Deputy Head of Marketing
Ben Jefferies
Senior Marketing Manager
Kyle Bradshaw
Marketing Manager
Rebecca Moore
Marketing Assistants
Antonia Georgieva, Ossama Nizami
Communications Department
Head of Communications
James Tringham
Senior Communications Manager
Ariane Oiticica
Communications Manager
HBL
Communications Officer
Sumayyah Sheikh
Communications Assistant
Andrea Laing
Audience Experience
Senior Audience Experience Managers
Oliver Robinson, Liz Davies-Sadd, Ben Skinner
Ticket Sales Managers
Jane Thomas, Bradley Thompson, Lucy Allen
Ticket Sales Team Leaders
Molly Barber, Alex Steggles, Máire Vallely, Nicola Watkinson, Charlotte Day
Operations Managers
Tabitha Fourie, Aksel Nichols, Ben Raynor, Samantha Teatheredge, Hayley Zwolinska
Operations Manager (Health & Safety)
Mo Reideman
Audience Event & Planning Manager
Freda Pouflis
Venue Managers
Catherine Campion, Scott Davies, Maria Pateli, Lotty Reeve, Shabana Zaman
Assistant Venue Managers
Sam Hind, Bronagh Leneghan, Melissa Olcese, Daniel Young
Young Crew Management
Dave Magwood, Rob Magwood, James Towell
Access and Licensing Manager
Rebecca Oliver
Security
Operations Manager
Naqash Sheikh
Audience Experience Coordinator
Ayelen Fananas
