EDITH AND ME
Yael Rasooly in coproduction with Nordland Visual Theater
Written, directed and performed by: Yael Rasooly
Regard Exterieur/ co-direction:
Neville Tranter
Yngvild Aspeli
Angélique Friant
Assistant director
Vanessa Valliere
Design:
Eduardo Felix
Revital Arieli
Aurora Majnoni
Ran Daniel Kopiler
Jérémie Legroux
Einat Landau
Yael Rasooly
Composer :
Iliya Maglnyk
Sound Design:
Ran Daniel Kopiler
Binya Reches
Light Design:
Boualeme Bengueddach
About the performance:
A new performance by Yael Rasooly.
Based on a true story.
A singer is mysteriously muted and immobilized and can no longer perform. A silenced
secret is burning inside her. Yet she is not alone – a feisty and determined Edith Piaf is there to drag her out of bed and pull her back into life.
Together, the unlikely duo conjures up a partnership of solidarity and tenderness, setting out together on a voyage full of grandeur and vulnerability, grief and victory, competition and compassion.
Yet the only way forward, to free themselves and each other from a haunting past, is to
retrace it. To tell a story of survival through art in the most physical sense imaginable. One more time they will face the demons lurking close by – and those deep within – until a new, undeniable voice is born.
A one woman show, with puppets/object theater and singing, explores – in an innovative and virtuosic way – the aftermath of violence and the incredible struggle for saving and reclaiming one’s life through art, with the inspiring force of a legendary woman and singer. The unfolding recollections of the trauma and injustice are artfully intertwined with the reawakening of the soul through music, human friendship and above all – love.
Edith and ME the third part of a trilogy of Yael Rasoolyl’s trilogy spanning over 15 years. speaking out against violence towards women and children.
Previous performances in 2024: Premiere Tour in Norway, Festival Internazionale dei Burattini e delle Figure Arrivano dal Mare Italy, Theater Waidspeicher, Erfurt Germany,
Festival international de marionnettes POPUP, Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm Sweden, L’avant Scene Colomb (Paris), Romain Rolland Théâtre (Paris), Amiens, France, MFEST Festival, MarionNettes Festival Neuchâtel Switzerland, and Festival of Wonder in Denmark. The show is Scheduled to perform in 2025 in Various theaters and festivals, including the 2025 Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes Charleville-Mézières.
A co-production with
Norland Visual Theater – Stamsund.
Supporters and additional co producers:
le Tas de Sable – Ches Panses Vertes, Centre National de la Marionnette
Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes de Charleville-Mézières ·
Le Manège, scène nationale – Reims ·
Espace Jéliote, Centre national de la Marionnette – Oloron Sainte Marie ·
Théâtre Romain Rolland, scène conventionnée de Villejuif ·
Dancing Ram Theatre, Rabinovitch Foundation for the arts.
About the company:
Yael Rasooly is a theater director, actor, singer, puppeteer and a teacher. She performed in more than 30 countries and hundreds of festivals and theaters worldwide.
Yael is a trained classical singer. She studied theater design in London at Saint Martin’s college of art and design, and graduated from the school of Visual Theater in Jerusalem. She has a distinct theatrical language, based on a multidisciplinary approach, combining forms of theater, puppetry, visual art and music. Her performances received raving reviews from publications such as The New York Times, Télérama and The Guardian, and won awards such as the excellence Award at the New York International Fringe Festival. She is presently touring with 6 different theater and music performances, primarily her latest show on an International tour, EDITH AND ME which is part of a trilogy that deals with violence towards women and children.
Yael has also been a guest professor for a semester at Trinity College, UConn and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center , and has taught masterclasses at the National Academy of Theatre Arts in Wroclaw(Poland), ESNAM (France), Université du Québec à Montréal, NYU, Berklee school of music and others. She frequently gives talks about transforming personal trauma through creation, with an emphasis on female creators in the field of visual theater.
“Yael Rasooly is a powerhouse of imagination.”
– EdinburghGuide
“Inspired wackiness.”
– The New York Times
“…when the Piaf puppet sings the room becomes one heart… “
–Aftonbladet Magazine
“Edith & Me is nothing short of a masterpiece”
– Rana.No Magazine
ABOUT NORDLAND VISUAL THEATRE:
Nordland Visual Theatre, based north of the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway, offers residencies and co-production to artists and theater companies.
The theater plays a key role in developing and promoting visual theater in Norway. Nordland Visual Theatre’s co-productions range from traditional puppet theater to cross-over works merging elements from the visual arts, theater, mime, dance and multimedia. Productions are collaborations with theater companies, puppeteers, actors, directors, stage designers, composers and artists from all over the world.
Vanessa Valliere creates original solo shows using elements of clown and puppetry. Vanessa tours nationally with her own work as a solo artist and in 2024 she was invited by Heather Henson’s Green Feather Foundation and the Puppet Slam Network to bring one of her slam pieces to Skupova Plzen, (Czech Republic). She has performed in three National Puppet Slams and her work has also been selected for every Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival’s Nasty, Brutish and Short slam since the Festival’s inception in 2015. Vanessa teaches for the Festival and her devised solo puppetry/clown shows have toured with their Neighborhood and Living Room tours. In 2020, Vanessa was awarded a commission by Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams to create Gut Feelings, a short puppet film that she co-starred, devised, directed and edited. The film received awards in categories like “Best Comedy Short.” It also appeared in the London Mime Festival and the Festival of Animated Objects in Calgary, Canada.
Manual Cinema is an Emmy Award winning performance collective and Vanessa has toured both nationally and internationally as Ada in their production of Ada/Ava. She is also one of the original cast members of Manual Cinema’s The End of TV. Vanessa was a member of an ensemble of clowns/performers for Tour De Fat, co-deviser and nationally touring performer, with Theater Unspeakable’s The American Revolution, a production that was presented by Lincoln Center Education in New York. Vanessa received an Individual Artist Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency (IACA) in 2019 and a Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) grant in 2020 and 2024. For sixteen years, Vanessa has been a proud nerd-cheerleader for Chicago’s own thirty-piece circus punk marching band, Mucca Pazza.
Ran Daniel Kopiler is a Props Designer Specializing in graphic design and 3d print designs and fabrication. He has worked with Yael Rasooly over a decade in various production and performance capacities in Europe, Canada and the US.
Eduardo Felix (puppet designer, director) holds a degree in Sculpture from EBA-UFMG and has worked as a puppeteer and set designer since 2001. He is the founder and artistic director of Pigmalião Escultura que Mexe, where he conducts research on puppet construction, dramaturgy, visual performance, sound and teaching of his practices. He has given workshops and presented his shows in several countries and in several Brazilian cities. He has written and directed shows such as A Filosofia na Alcova, O Quadro de Todos Juntos, Mordaz, Macunaïma Gourmet, Brésil, Elefanteatro and Fábulas Antropofágicas para Dias Fascistas.
Neville Tranter (1955, Australia) completed his drama in 1976, and founded the Stuffed Puppet Theatre the same year. After the Stuffed Puppet Theatre had taken part in the Festival of Fools in Amsterdam in 1978, Neville Tranter moved to the Netherlands, where his visual and emotional adult puppet theatre developed to assume its present form. In his own brutal, ruthless but poetic way, he confronts the audience with their fears and dreams, urges and desires, personified by what are often life size talking puppets. Since years Neville Tranter gives workshops for puppeteers in major puppet academies in Europe and beyond. www.stuffedpuppet.nl
Artistic director of Plexus Polaire, Yngvild Aspeli, develops a visual world that brings our most buried feelings to life. The use of life-sized puppets is at the center of her work, but the actor’s performance, the presence of the music and the use of light and video are all equal elements in communicating the story.Director, actress, puppeteer and puppet-maker, Yngvild Aspeli studied at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris (2003-2005) and at ESNAM (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette) in Charleville-Mézières (2005-2008).Within her French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire, she has directed six shows: Signals (2011), Opera Opaque (2013), Ashes (2014), Chambre noire (2017), Moby Dick (2020) and Dracula (2022). She is currently working on an adaptation of A Doll’s House that premiered in Autumn 2023. Yngvild is currently an associated artist at CDN Dijon-Bourgogne (France) and companionship-artist at Théâtre d’Auxerre (France). She is also the artistic director of Figurteatret i Nordland (Nordland Visual Theatre) in Stamsund, Norway.