Some teenagers dream of running away to join the circus. French circus performer, Aurelia Thieree, entertained a different fantasy when she was growing up. 'I had a moment when I was 14 and I rebelled,' she says. 'I wanted to go to school. I wanted to live in a house. But I got over it.'
Lucky for her audiences that she did. Now 32, Thieree continues to entertain, after having spent a childhood hiding in suitcases and squeezing into traps as a human prop, or swinging from trapezes and balancing on tightropes in the circus-inspired shows created by her parents, including Le Cirque Imaginaire and later, Le Cirque Invisible, which is still touring today.
Most recently, Thieree has been starring in L'Oratorio d'Aurelia, an absurd spectacle of images and music in which her mastery of the theatrical comes into bloom. After its premier in France, it will be showing at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.
Created and directed by her mother, Victoria Thieree Chaplin, (daughter of the English actor Charlie Chaplin,) L'Oratorio d'Aurelia tells the story of Aurelia's curious world, an ephemeral existence where nothing is what it seems. A young woman wanders around meeting human and not-so-human beings. Chimeras are revealed or concealed through the movements of red velvet curtains. It's a visual patchwork in which each piece has its own sense and logic.
Thieree, who is soft-spoken despite growing up in the spotlight, demurely declines to say much more about the show. If she 'talked about it, it will just fall flat [because] the whole show is about surprises'. Pressed to reveal a little bit more, Thieree's response is as enigmatic as her stage role promises to be.
'It's about a lady and you don't know whether she has gone mad or if she has entered another world,' she says.
