SHELANAGIG
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SHELANAGIG
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Miranda La Mutanta as "Chicken woman" Mutonia, Italy, 1997 |
From 1997 to 1999 Shelanagig toured Europe with our own very particular kind of radical street theatre. An all girl enterprise (except for Richnofski Chestickofski) we performed at music and theatre festivals, squats, protest and free parties gaining a certain notoriety along the way. Shelanagig was also our first experiments with renewable energy powered theatre.(See www.cirqueidyllic.org for where this later took us) Shelanagig specialised in grotesque colourfull street shows with a political/ environmental kick, borrowing slightly from the tradition of the bouffon, using recycled costumes and set, fire, puppets and female fooling around. As well as the show, we did a lot of improvised walkabout, getting into all kinds of theatrical mischief on the streets of Europe, at times it got dangerous, but back then we where too young or kalimucho-ed to notice... |
Our first show in 1997 "Wild Mugwort Magic" a spectacle so extremely bizarre that when we saw ourselves on video we where so freaked out we had to stop doing it at once. This was after we had toured it to the Czech republic and Bosnia. The show featured Kim as an imp with goofy teeth (on the left in white), Angela as some kind of feminist fairy (in purple), Miranda as the god Pan (crouching) Kate as the unforgettable Toad woman (on the right with the multi-tits) Siobhan played Matthew Hopkins the witch finder general. (Pictured below with witchy puppet) |
Wild Mugwort Magic, 1997 |
Witchy and Siobhan, 1997. |
Earth witches v. Metal birds, Angela and Miranda, Mutonia, Italy 1997. |
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Our second and third tours was with the Freak Show, a weird little apocalyptical allegory in which we each embodied freak show girls whose aberration was their environmental crimes. The freaks where ruled over by a sadistic scientista,played by Janny in 1998, Claire in 1999. Monique joined us in 1999 as an evil lab assistant. This was the year that Abi joined us as stage manager, while pregnant with Will, the first of the Shelanagig girl's baby boys. (Although Kim, Claire, Angela and Miranda have now broken the rule by all having daughters..) We toured in Spain, France, Italy in 1998. In 1999 we went, among other places to Hungary for the Eclipse festival. |
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The Shelanagig Freaks, 1999.
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Miranda, Siobhan, Angela in the famous Bath tub, which we wheeled around the streets of Europe, seen here at La Vallette, France, where we still rehearse. |
| MEET THE FREAKS... | |||||||
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Shelanagig has since mutated into many other projects, but we don't consider the company to be finished. Some day we will revive the old freak show girl ways, dig out extra limbs, platform boots and laddered fishnets... maybe we'll leave the fun-fur pan shorts and rubber toad costume though... Shelanagig thanks the following people who aided and abetted the insanity. I'm sure I have forgotten some, those days where long ago and hazy. La Vielle Vallette massive, you don't like thanks but what would we do with out you? Alberto/Paco and El Paso, Torino, also the late great Kachina, Torino; Kasa de la Muntanya, Barcelona and La Paloma ocupa and countless other squats and social centres across Europe, viva! Laurant and Traumatism; Ainsley and Claire in Andalusia; the lovely Ted; Alan and the residents of the slope, Amsterdam, and the angel in white overalls for helping us fix Thomasina the tiny trailer; Rise Phoenix; D.N.A puppets who got us one of our first gigs in Blackpool; Wheatstone house collective; Alice Maschler, who took many of these pictures; Elinor the porus walrus; Mr. Richnofski Chesticofski... |
At the Eclipse Festival Hungary 1999. On stilts left to right: Siobhan, Angela, Miranda, Claire. Monique on the ground. |
