Hot on the heels of its success at Vault 2018, award-winning company Les Foules presents The Year of the Rooster Monk at the Pleasance Downstairs. With support and development from Theatre Deli, director and designer duo Nathalie and Nadège Adlam team up with Emmy-nominated actor Giselle Gant, and musicians Lydia Benecke and Anna Waldmann for a séance-cum-theatre show which sees a pre-digital ghost take a lonely millennial on a trip she won’t forget.
It’s late, it’s hot and out-of-work actor and artful procrastinator Giselle loafs on a couch as rapidly gentrifying Harlem shifts and changes beneath her feet on the streets below. Suddenly, a call comes through from Mom that changes the course of everything.
As the year of the Monkey gives way to the inauspicious year of the Fire Rooster, Giselle starts to wake up to the realities of life ‒ realities that she’s been avoiding for years. But she’s not alone. Seizing the opportunity to audition for the part of Oda Mae Brown ‒ the reluctant psychic from 90s movie Ghost ‒ Giselle decides to channel Oda Mae’s chutzpah and tap into her own #BlackGirlMagic. From here on in she’s going to read the signs for what they are.
And so begins a journey via millennial isolation through analogue/digital divides, mother/daughter spats, gentrifying spaces and places right into the nomadic digital age. Through song and action, possession and excommunication, Les Foules tell us a story of loss, loneliness and redemption in the big city.
The Year of The Rooster Monk is at The Pleasance Downstairs 22nd May – 3rd June 2018.
