Good Soup
Molière’s 400th anniversary project
Images by Jo Marie Brent – www.jomariebrent.com
About the show
Good Soup is an exploration of Molière’s world, both through his words and the music of his time. To celebrate 400 years since his birth, Ensemble Molière joins forces with two clowns to create a 60-minute performance transporting the audience into the playwright’s cosmos.
In a space and time not dissimilar to our own, where environmental catastrophe, popular upheaval, war and pestilence rage through the country, the king withdraws into a world of mirrors, spectacle and art. Two servants are trying to uphold the Molièrian idea of ‘decorum’ while performing multiple roles, singing and dancing around the king’s banquet table, until the world seeps into the dining hall.
Good Soup investigates Molière’s form of bourgeois comedy, and asks what these narrative structures still have to offer. Bringing together baroque music, absurdist theatre, slapstick and puppetry, Good Soup takes a critical look at our own relationship with catastrophe and the desire to escape into spectacle and ‘happiness’
Premiere – 29th July 2022, Sands Film Music Room (photos above)
Second show – 12th December 2022, York Early Music Festival
Artistic Team
Klara Kofen - dramaturg/director/designer/puppeteer/stagehands
Rachel Wise - movement director/puppeteer/stage hands
James Oldham - clown/performer
Lizzy Shakespeare - clown/performer
Bryn Fitch - puppeteering consultant
Triin Kolmkant - Costume Supervisor
Ensemble Molière
This piece was developed during a residency at Hawkwood, supported by The Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust.
The project was supported by Continuo Foundation, The Marchus Trust, Angel Early Music, and generous private and crowdfunding donors
Pygmalion (2017) - Ensemble Molière’s previous cross-arts production of Rameau’s opera
Ensemble Molière have gained a reputation as an established early music ensemble. Their unique combination of instruments provides memorable and creative programmes from the repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries, all performed on historical instruments.
Ensemble Molière have been selected as the first-ever Radio 3 New Generation Baroque Ensemble for two years from October 2021, a new scheme run in partnership by BBC Radio 3, the National Centre for Early Music and the Royal College of Music.
Waste Paper Opera
Klara Kofen (director) is a writer, researcher, director and artist with a background in intellectual history and philosophy. She is the Artistic Director of Waste Paper Opera, an experimental music theatre and performance collective, with whom she has created and produced five large scale works and multiple smaller performances and workshops, and curated the interdisciplinary performance series Whole Punch and London Experimental Variety Show.
Follow the links to listen again to our live performances of Fatal Amour from Pygmalion and the Tambourin from Pièces de Clavecin No 3 on BBC Radio 3 In Tune.
