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LICEDEI
Semianyki (The Family)

Production: Drôles de dames (France)

Founded in 1968 by Slava Polunine, Teatr Licedei is an institution of the art of clown based in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Their latest production entitled Semianyki ("The Family") is a collective creation by the young members of the group who stayed in Russia after the fall of Soviet Union.

Semianyki is the sweet and sour portrait of a totally crazy family. It's a constant struggle for power between the Father, always drunk and threatening to leave, the pregnant Mother threatening to give birth to a new baby, and a bunch of wild and creative kids threatening to kill Mother and Father to exist.

It's an international success which already conquered Festival d'Avignon in 2005, Theatre du Rond Point in Paris and The Hackney Empire in London in 2007, Roma's Auditorium, Londrina Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Helsinki Festival, very recently at Montreal's Tohu, and of course back home in Russia.

Without a word but with crazy energy and delirious inventivity, the russian clowns of Licedei will make you laugh you head off, from kids to grand parents.

Artistic direction & scenography: Boris Petrushansky
Cast: Olga Eliseeva (the Mother), Alexandr Gusarov (the Father), Kasyan Ryvkin (the Brother), Marina Makhaeva (the Elder Sister), Elena Sadkova (the Baby), Yulia Sergeeva (the Younger Sister).
Production: Drôles de Dames, France.

TECHNICAL CONDITIONS

Length of the show: 100 mn without pause.
Minimum space required: 10m deep x 14m wide x 6m high.
Download Semianyki's technical rider

PRESS REVIEW

You can look for meaning if you want - is this a metaphor for chaotic modern Russia ? - or just sit back and laugh. Either way, Semianyki is an experience not to be missed. The Evening Standard

It is staged surprisingly and played brilliantly. Its spirit of good, queasy fun hovers in the head long after the last rubber chicken has fallen from the rafters. Times

This nuclear family is held precariously together by Eliseeva's matriarch, a fantastic, grimacing figure, about 25 months pregnant and on heat. From little more than a ski pole, a rocking chair, a dodgy chandelier and a portrait of someone looking disturbingly similar to Camilla Parker-Bowles, the players have managed to make something witty, inventive and consistently engaging. So engaging, in fact, that at one point a 75 year-old man leapt from his seat to join in a pillow fight! Camden Journal

VIDEO TRAILER

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