THEATER FREDERIK, (FREDERIK VANMELLE)

Frederik Vanmelle

Born on February 29, 1936 in Ghent, Belgium
Died in Mexico City September 19, 1985

Was an artist, actor and creator of theater nationality Belgian, born in Ghent and settled in Mexico City.

Vanmelle began in the theater in 1963 under the direction of Étienne Decroux in Paris and became a disciple of Marcel Marceau. In an innovative way, he ventured into pantomime , speechless theater and black light puppets or black theater. With his work he demonstrated that theater without words is not a mere language of the deaf, but a new and rich way of creating fantastic and suggestive environments and images.

In 1969 he founded the company “Pantomime Theater of the People” and later was director of the “Theater Workshop of the Council of Culture of Brussels”. In 1974 he founded the theater company known as Theater Frederik in Brussels, which he transferred toSpain and finally to Mexico in 1978, definitively.

His plays were very successful both in Mexico and abroad in the 80s , coming to represent his native country at the prestigious Cervantino Festival in Mexico, with the play “Angeles in the desert.”

Vanmelle always saw life in a poetic way, so a few days before his death, he wrote in a playbill:

Frederik Vanmelle’s life came to an end, tragically, in 1985, during the landslides that accompanied the 1985 Mexico earthquake.