Written by Bob Frith and Alison Duddle, this show toured the UK and Holland in 2002 and 2003. Between 2004 and 2006 it toured the USA.
Charlotte Salomon was a German Jewish woman, a painter, born in Berlin in 1917. 26 years later she was put to death in Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration camp. In the last year of her life, while in exile in the South of France, she produced an amazing series of gouache paintings about her life. They provide us with one of the most penetrating visual records of an individual life in the Nazi era.
Despite the grim context, what is immediately apparent about Charlottes work is the amazing life in her paintings - fresh, sometimes amusing, often deeply painful images, that are teeming with energy, colour and anecdote. 'Company of Angels' tells the story of Charlotte as a young girl, surrounded by secrets, who learns that her own despair and feelings follow a pattern set by many of her female relatives, and decides to search for meaning and joy in life - by painting it.
'Company of Angels' is told using Horse + Bamboo's uniquely vivid and distinctive style - combining masks, puppetry, movement and specially composed music. The design of the piece is drawn directly from the painting style of Charlotte Salomon. At times precise and detailed, at other times loose, but always intensely coloured, with an expressive use of both shape, colour, and the use of haunting and repeated motifs.