The show

CELLOPHANE

A hit comedy monologue about the modern  woman trying to make it on all frontiers. Being a brilliant mom, foxy career bitch, nurturing the marriage, having a volcanic sex-life and being tops 40 kilos – and looking like Angelina Jolie while you‘re at it…MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

The story starts at Helen´s house. She just read in the paper that the average happy couple „does IT“ 2 times a week! She and Paul only „do IT“ 2 times a month…on average…which is clearly unacceptable on the happiness-meter! Helen decides to promptly fix this, being the modern-day-working-super-woman.
She luckily read a women´s magazine that has the solution: 10 ways to light the fire!!! Helen chooses number 6: Prepare a romantic dinner, put on some sexy underwear, wrap yourself in cellophane and when your husband comes home from work present yourself like a wrapped-in sex-toy.

Somehow this was the cleanliest method of all 10 of them. Better than lying in the bathtub and having him shave your legs…or video tape „IT“…ooh, really sexy…until you watch the recording!

But when you are lying on the sofa wrapped in like a Cellophane Mummy there is no room for surprises because you can hardly move. The woman who wrote the ten advises clearly has no children…what if they decide to wake up and call for their mum? „…you need to go pee-pee? Hang on darling mommy is coming…she just has to unwrap herself..!“

Planning! That´s what the modern woman needs to learn.

Not how you raise a child by reading all the books on up-bringing, devote all of your time to the child and breastfeed for two years…that´s a piece of cake. But how do you raise a child when you´re never at home, don´t read a thing and your milk couldn´t feed a mouse…plus attending to the husband as well…boy-oh-boy….Cellophane!

And the planning mustn´t fail. One tiny mistake and the snowball effect kicks in.

We go back in time and witness a day in Helen’s life when she wakes up too late and spends the entire day chasing her own tail and trying to get the planning back in order.

We meet her children, the Kindergarten boss; Miss Five Thirty, the Boss, the Husband, the Mum, the Monster SUV on the Troll Tires and we witness her fight with the car child seat she can never learn how to work….so she calls it Houdini.

Like a true Modern Woman this is just a walk in the park for her…or almost…OK! Let´s face it; with shit up to her neck she tries to survive the day.

At the end of the play we return back to where we started: The romantic Cellophane-night with Paul is about to begin…or what? How will the night end? Come see the show and see how it ends. Laugh at Helen and Paul and maybe at yourself while you’re at it. After all we are all shoveling the same shit in this life. …. Warm greetings from: Björk Jakobsdóttir, author and a mother of 2 from Iceland.

Notes To Editors

Production companies Himnariki/ Interprod

Play: Cellophane, written by Björk Jakobsdóttir, translated by Neil Haig

Actress: Thorunn Larusdottir / Original actress Björk Jakobsdóttir

Director: Björk Jakobsdóttir / Original director Augusta Skuladottir

Set designer: Gudrun Öyahals

Light designer: Gunnar Helgason

Sound and costume design: Augusta Skuladottir and Björk Jakobsdóttir

Cellophane had it´s world premiere in Iceland in the spring of 2002. The venue was a closed down fish factory turned into a 100 seats theatre located in a small town on the outskirts of Reykjavik. The goal was to have a run of 10-15 performances or for as long as the money allowed.

That was 8 years ago. Cellophane was performed 220 times in Iceland. Half a year after the opening the play was moved to a 400 seats venue and ended up in a tour around the country. By comparison, other similar shows that have been selling at this level in Iceland are The Vagina Monologues, Defending The Caveman, and Shakespeare in Sixty Minutes.

In 2003 the first contract was made with a foreign company and Cellophane has now been staged in 12 countries accross Europe.

The monologue is 80 minutes running and is preferably performed in a local where the audience is sitting at tables.