Teatro: Mummenschanz, Theatre: Mummenschanz

Posted by Ricardo Marcenaro | Posted in , | Posted on 21:29

















History 
 
In 1972, Bernie Schürch and Andres Bossard, both from Switzerland, with Italian-American Floriana Frassetto formed their now celebrated visual theatre group. They gave themselves an original name, Mummenschanz (roughly meaning masquerade), and set out with a sense of fun and imagination to invent a new form of theatre. Though each had a different background, the three artists were united by a common goal: to create a non-verbal theatrical language that would transcend the traditional barriers of nationality and culture.
 
From their first major success at the Avignon Festival 1972, they have been performing in Western and Eastern Europe to North and South America, from Middle East and Africa to Asia, Australia and New Zealand, including the most renowned worldwide festivals. They performed for 3 years at the Bijou Theatre on Broadway defying all expectations and being enthusiastically reviewed by the world’s most important magazines and newspapers.
 
Since their first performance, these talented artists have thrilled audiences around the world with a spectacular and revolutionary nonverbal theatrical style. In more than three decades, Mummenschanz has created and extraordinary number of well-loved figures and fantasy creatures in the shape of versatile face masks, half-body to whole-body masks and tree-dimensional sculptural heads.
 
On the stage, they amazingly turn everyday objects and materials into abstract forms, simple costumes and expressive masks, and engage in a wordless dialogue with the audience. The stories and episodes, filled with humour and imagination, deal with human relationships which can be understood by any audience around the world, across any linguistic and cultural boundaries.
 
The death of Andres Bossard in 1992 was a great loss for Mummenschanz.
Floriana Frassetto and Bernie Schürch came to terms with their new circumstances and with the help of long-time friend Hans Jörg Tobler. They established the Mummenschanz Foundation with the aim of helping new non verbal theatres.
 
In that period they also created and toured “Parade” and “Next”, a new dimension of their visual art, performed with different actors.
 
Since the year 2000, Mummenschanz has become a company of five with Pietro Montandon, Raffaella Mattioli and the technical director Jan Maria Lukas.

With this same cast, assisted by technical director Jan Maria Lukas, Mummenschanz now performs the present show “3x11", a retrospective on 33 years of Mummenschanz. 








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