Nola's current productions
Exit Napoleon Pursued by Rabbits
She trained at the Royal Ballet School in London and then danced professionally at Malmö Stadsteater and Tivoli Pantomime Theatre in Copenhagen, before turning to mime and studying with Marcel Marceau in Paris.
She was a founder member of the French based International Research Troupe Kiss, co-founded Friends Roadshow with Jango Edwards, and was a member of the Bristol Old Vic Company. In 1974 she founded the London Mime Theatre with Matthew Ridout, with whom she has worked ever since.
Nola and Joseph Seelig, were the original instigators of the London International Mime Festival, which has now been running for over 20 years.
Nola premiered her first solo show at Le Festival du Monde in Nancy in 1975. Since then she has created 12 full length shows and toured the world. Her unique combination of mime, clowning, puppetry, dance and foolery has been seen in 65 countries to date..
A great lover of the works of William Shakespeare, she created the extraordinary Shakespeare the Works with John Mowat, where four of the Bard’s tragedies were turned into comedies, and included a unique version of Hamlet for two hands.
She later tackled A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the fairies were represented by puppet salad vegetables.
In 1990 Nola radically changed her style and began to present full length comic dramas where one wordless character is developed over an evening. The highly successful Elizabeth’s Last Stand, directed by Simon McBurney, is such a piece. It explores the loneliness of an old woman when she develops delusions of grandeur and tries to recreate the court of Elizabeth I of England in her living room.
This was followed in 1993 by a two woman show with the contemporary dancer Sally Owen. Directed by Carlos Trafic, from Argentina, And the Ship Sailed On explores the clash of two women of different cultures who are forced to share a small cabin on a nightmarish voyage of immigration.
In Mozart Preposteroso Nola uses all her skills to present a clown’s fantasy on the life of a musical phenomenon.
Exit Napoleon Pursued by Rabbits is her latest show, inspired in part by Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.
It deals with dangerous charisma and how to get it.
Nola is also now in demand as a director, her speciality being subverting tragedies, by turning them into clown plays. She began with The House of Bernarda Alba by Garcia Lorca, performed by the Swedish all women clown group Teater Manjaña. They won the Dagens Nyheter prize for the funniest show of 1995. She has also directed Miss Julie by August Strindberg for the same group, a hit at the 1998 Strindberg Festival in Stockholm.
Her directing work in Norway includes Doña Quixote by Coby Omvlee and Ibsen’s The Wild Duck for the Oslo Nye Teater.
She also gives workshops and masterclasses when time allows.
Nola and Joseph Seelig, were the original instigators of the London International Mime Festival, which has now been running for over 26 years.
Over the years Nola has made numerous television appearances. They include a BBC Playhouse Special After You Hugo, where she played a French dancer who impersonates the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in variety theatre.
She has been the subject of two documentaries : BBC Arena and Meridian Television’s The Pier.
Nola has received a Total Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award, The Charlie Rivel Award for Clowning from the Festival of Amandola and has been inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in the United States.
Elizabeth’s Last Stand was awarded best solo show of 2000 by Venue Magazine.