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Storytelling PR

Eleanor Bally

Puppet Animation Scotland announce line up for
MANIPULATE Festival 2023

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MANIPULATE Festival 2023 returns to the capital with one of its most ambitious programmes to date – with shows at the Traverse Theatre, Summerhall, The Studio at Festival Theatre, Fruitmarket, online and outside across the city.

Image: Un-retained (composite image). Courtesy of Sandman.

Edinburgh’s international festival of visual theatre and animated film, MANIPULATE, is a celebration of visually stunning work, with a focus on artworks which breathe life into the inanimate or tell stories primarily through imagery. 

The 16th edition of the festival will offer audiences a rich palette of events across a range of visual artforms, including large-scale illuminated hands which will roam across the city; intricate live micro-cinema featuring over 2000 miniature animals; an aerial work inspired by lobster fishing; and theatre simultaneously performed and livestreamed between Scotland and Argentina.

There are an array of themes and ideas to uncover, with much of this year’s programme speaking to the stories that we tell ourselves, and one another, about who we are. Further themes of the programme include migration, the resilience of the human spirit, memory, celebrations of life and of death, and our relationship with a changing climate.

MANIPULATE Festival 2023 will run from Thursday 2  – Sunday 12 February, presenting a dynamic programme of live performances, installations, workshops, and film screenings – taking place in person and online, with shows at Summerhall, The Studio @ Festival Theatre, Traverse Theatre and, for the first time, Fruitmarket. The Festival will also see outdoor installations take to the streets of Edinburgh. Acclaimed international artists will share work alongside Scotland’s own leading artists, including the return of MANIPULATE favourites and brand-new companies. 

Alongside a diverse programme of brand-new work for MANIPULATE Festival 2023, some elements of the programme are finally coming to the stage after being rescheduled from 2021 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dawn Taylor, Artistic Director and CEO of Puppet Animation Scotland, says: 

“We are thrilled that 2023 will see the return of a full MANIPULATE Festival programme for the first time in three years. By expanding across Edinburgh into new venues, the city streets and online, we can reach and connect with new audiences and spark new conversations. We are looking forward to celebrating the sheer magic that puppetry, visual theatre and animation can offer during these challenging times; a spark of hope and light that MANIPULATE has come to represent in the dark of the Scottish winter. 

With a more varied palette of artforms than ever, and featuring work which is playful, bold, interrogative and joyful from a dynamic group of visually-driven artists, 2023 promises to be one of our most ambitious programmes to date. We can’t wait to share it with you!” 

Jaine Lumsden, Creative Scotland’s Theatre Officer, says: 

“MANIPULATE is all about bringing together Scottish and international visual theatre and animation of the highest quality and artistic ambition. The Festival plays a central role in the physical performance sector and we’re so glad to be behind its return to full programming next year.” 

The 2023 Programme includes: 

MANIPULATE Festival 2023 will open with a roaming performance on the streets of Edinburgh, created by Fergus Dunnet and Ronan McMahom. The Dab Hands are large-scale illuminated puppets specially commissioned by MANIPULATE Festival to usher in the 2023 Festival and welcome all those they come to pass. Following this will be an exuberant Opening Night Party in celebration of their first full festival in three years, offering exclusive pop-up performances, music and sneak peeks into highlights across the festival, and a visit from specially commissioned giant illuminated puppets for all to enjoy. 

Raw Material & Vanishing Point present the World Premiere of Love Beyond (Act of Remembrance), by renowned theatre artist Ramesh Meyyappan. This tender and visually creative new show is a love story that follows Harry, who has dementia and uses sign language. Events from the past and present intertwine as Harry moves into a new home. Just as his nurse begins to learn his language, Harry begins to forget, leaving him in a unique world alone with only himself. 

Also exploring distorted memory are Vision Mechanics, who will present The Fantastic Life of Minnie Rubinski. Part installation and part filmed puppetry show, this intimate experience is a funny, moving and sometimes nonsensical journey through the title character’s life, synapses and fragmented memories.

Relationships and their complex dynamics are the forefront for Scottish aerial theatre company Paper Doll Militia, who return to MANIPULATE with the World Premiere of Arthropoda – gripping aerial circus theatre that unpacks the unravelling of a relationship through aerial performance. The piece is told through the visual analogy of lobster fishing, and a lobster stuck in a creel who can leave but chooses not to.

Scotland-based Shotput question Hollywood norms in Ferguson and Barton, as they awake in a filmic dream world exploring the power dynamics of their own relationship. Inspired by Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the show explores communication and miscommunication, voyeurism, gender roles, and sensuality. 

Also inspired by Hitchcock are festival returnees Agrupación Señor Serrano’s with their show Birdie. The Spanish masters of micro-cinema explore migration through multimedia performance – thousands of migrating birds draw impossible shapes in the sky in between two mirages; one with wars, droughts and deforestation, the other with safe streets, stability and renewable energies. 

Continuing the theme of refuge and migration, performance maker Tashi Gore, visual theatre expert Ross Mackay, and playwright Will Gore create a hybrid live performance and digital animation with The Yellow Canary an epic true story and leap into the imagination of a young child exploring love, loss and what it means to flee your home. 

In a further exploration of migrant identity, Katherina Radeva of award-winning, bold performance art duo, Two Destination Language, presents 40/40 – fresh from its World Premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022. Katherina is a woman, a migrant and now, a dancer. 40/40 is an unapologetic celebration of 40 years of joy and hardship. 

In an exciting development for 2023, MANIPULATE will take to the streets of Edinburgh, with the Scottish Premiere of Sandman’s Un-retained. A collaboration between choreographer Sabine Molenaar, multimedia artist Gertjan Jiasion and composer Jochem Baelus, it combines dance, audiovisual production and projection mapping to tell the timeless, weightless story of being human. Un-retained will be projected onto the architecture of Edinburgh (with an exact location to be announced at a later date) for the duration of MANIPULATE 2023. 

Free public installation work at the Festival also includes A Rock and a Hard Place, from puppetry and micro cinema theatre expert Gavin Glover. This kinetic sculpture work initially premiered as part of Restless Worlds at MANIPULATE in 2021. A collection of mini dioramas made up of the Earth, Sky, Sea and the Mind, this installation imagines a parallel world, with accompanying audio to be enjoyed by headphones. 

Into the Long Green Jaws is another World Premiere presented by Long Green Jaws – artist/musicians Sarah McWhinney and Fergus Hall. Combining experimental, ambient improvised music with installation, puppetry and performance art, Into the Long Green Jaws is a piece of visual gig-theatre which explores the intricacy and balance of coastal environments as multi-layered meso-ecosystems. A free drop-in installation will accompany the piece. 

Continuing MANIPULATE’s tradition of presenting high-quality puppetry for adults, festival favourites Ljubljana Puppet Theatre return to MANIPULATE with Moč (The Power), which uses intimate puppet-object theatre to question different motives of power and weakness, the public vs the private.

International puppetry work is also the focus of VOX Muziektheater, who present the UK Premiere of Poor Thing, a soul-stirring performance that combines opera and object theatre as three musical funeral directors try to reconstruct the forgotten life of an anonymous woman through her belongings. It is an ode to melancholy and an embracing of life. 

Scotland-based live performance artist Suzi Cunningham performs a double bill of Rules to Live By and Eidos. The first is a celebration of transformation, a requiem for one of Suzi’s teenage idols, Mark E. Smith; a rebellious aspiration to a hero’s punk anarchy. The second, Eidos, is a tribute to Suzi’s punk-in-her-own-right Grandmother. 

Pioneer of self-suspension rope performance Kasia Zawadzka explores the idea of the obsessive inner voice that keeps you from being at peace in aerial performance Ill Lit. Returning after a digital work-in-progress as part of MANIPULATE 2021, this full production using the Japanese art of Shibari explores mental health, repetition and the struggle to break out. 

Anna Nekrassova presents Before Thumbelina, an everyday fairytale for adults which beautifully unfolds into a touching story about a person’s struggles with infertility. Carried by song and rhythm as well as puppet and object theatre, the solo performance by Nekrassova focuses on the moment before H. C. Andersen’s renowned story of Thumbelina.

Clown Cabaret with Plutot La Vie invites audiences to share a drink as part of an evening of cabaret. Across an hour and a half, four clown performances will lead audiences through the weird, wild and sublime stupidity, with a drink included in your ticket. 

In animation, MANIPULATE 2023 will see the return of Animated Womxn: International Shorts, screening the work of extraordinary, award-winning female and non-binary animators from across the globe. Animated Highlights will pack in a dizzying array of animation styles and untold stories, featuring new work from established and emerging talent from around the world, in partnership with Edinburgh Short Film Festival. For the first time, these screenings will take place in-person at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket, as well as being available digitally. 

Works in Progress will also continue with SNAPSHOTS, a first look at exciting new visual theatre workshops from six Scottish artists. Sand, from director Daniel Livingston and performer Petre Dobre – is a highly visual performance that uses movement, object manipulation and shadow puppetry to explore our dreams and face our nightmares; also supported by the Surge Bursary Programme, Noah Tomson’s Between Earth and Moon will be performed simultaneously in Argentina and Scotland, taking inspiration from Italo Calvo’s surrealist short story, Distance of the Moon.  

Workshops throughout the Festival will give an insight into creating your own work with Conceiving Visual Theatre with Al Seed; Micro Cinema Theatre with Gavin Glover; and developing your own multi-operator puppetry skill with Mervyn Millar in Working as One.

Tickets for the 2023 Festival will be on sale from 5pm, Thursday 10 November: manipulatefestival.org.

ENDS.

Summerhall round-up: February 2022

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Summerhall Programme February 2022

  • Katie Goh, author of The End: Surviving the World Through Imagined Disasters, presents a season of speculative disaster movies alongside other sensational screenings in Summerhall Cinema;
  • Live music from Dry Cleaning, Roddy Woomble and more
  • Exhibitions by David Williams, Iain Patterson, Abigail Simmonds and Radosław Liweń and James Sinfield continue.

Summerhall dives into 2022 with a packed cinema programme featuring a curated season of speculative disaster movies from author Katie Goh, foreign language hits from Screen Horizons as well as modern and cult classics. Alongside this, the Dissection Room returns after a brief hiatus with gigs from Dry Cleaning, Roddy Woomble, the Transatlantic Ensemble’s ever-popular Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours gig and more. Our four outstanding visual arts exhibitions continue through to Sunday 20 March. 

Katie Goh, author of The End: Surviving the World Through Imagined Disasters, presents a selection of speculative disaster movies at Summerhall Cinema from 10-25 February. This includes films such as the critically acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road, 1972’s post-apocalyptic environmental sci-fi Silent Running, Hayao Miyazaki’s second film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Lars von Trier’s extraordinary Melancholia and many more. These films speak to the present moment, but also perhaps the post-apocalyptic ways we might live in the future if we continue down a social, political and ecological road of disaster.

Summerhall Cinema presents both modern and cult classics, including The Safdie Brothers’ Good Time and Oscar award winning Moonlight. In a bloody Valentine’s Day double feature, Joan Crawford goes berserk with an axe in horror classic Strait-Jacket, and “glorious retro fantasy-horror” The Love Witch takes the romantically-inclined down a dark, psychedelic path. Screen Horizons presents a selection of foreign-language films from across the globe including Josep, which was named best animated film in the César awards; Greek expatriate director Costa-Gavras’ Academy Award winning Z; the tender Love Affair(s) / Les Choses qu’on dit, les choses qu’on fait; and Hello World! / Bonjour le monde, which is made with papier-mâché puppets animated in stop motion and hand-crafted sculptures set in beautifully painted backgrounds.

Live in the Dissection Room and back by popular demand, the Transatlantic Ensemble performs Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours; post-punk poets Dry Cleaning play on Friday 18 February supported by electronic trio PVA; Pokey Lafarge performs his latest album crafted during the pandemic; and Roddy Woomble – considered one of Scotland’s finest songwriters, and frontman of much loved Scottish alternative rock band Idlewild – will bless the Dissection Room with his warm baritone voice. Rescheduled from 2021, second generation folk musician Sam Amidon brings a personal approach to his music and performance for his self-titled seventh album. 

Summerhall’s first four exhibitions of 2022 bring warmth and energy to a chilly Edinburgh winter. Abigail Simmonds’ sparkling Space Becomes Time sees the upstairs Meadows Galleries filled with life buoys, corrugated sheeting, table tennis balls and many other carefully chosen objects painstakingly covered in sequins. While in the War Memorial and Sciennes Galleries, James Sinfield and Radosław Liweń’s Remote Control delves into the anthropocene, exploring the many ways in which we as humans impact the environment around us. In the Corner Gallery, Photographer David Williams’ Cedar Tree – Tofuku-ji Zen Temple, Kyoto and flow…(extracts) both from the project series, one taste: (n)ever-changing (2003-2009) reflect on notions of time, space and self within the context of Buddhist temples and wider aspects of Japanese life. In the newly reopened Lab Gallery Iain Patterson’s Balance explores the possibilities of improvisation in abstract painting and drawing. All exhibitions will close on Sunday 20 March. 

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Yours Sincerely

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Quick Duck Theatre presents

Yours Sincerely

Soho Theatre
Monday 14 March – Saturday 19 March
Press Nights: Tuesday 15 & Wednesday 16 March

We’re going back to 2017. Average graduate debt is at £50,000, Kylie Minogue is making a comeback, and Will Jackson has accidentally stolen 300 second class stamps from the Post Office. But he’s making them count. He’s writing letters. 

Yours Sincerely is a queer comedy about the complications of modern-day communication that brilliantly explores the joys and pitfalls of the lost art of letter writing. Based on real-life correspondences and told through a mixture of storytelling and lipsync cabaret, Will guides us through everything from reconnecting with old friends and ex-boyfriends to run-ins with the John Lewis marketing department. Stamp collecting has never looked more sexy… 

A five star hit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019, Yours Sincerely comes to Soho Theatre for one week this March, following an English tour throughout February.  Though plans for a full UK tour in 2020 were halted due to the pandemic, Will has adapted this solo show to work on different scales, instead performing in hyperlocal venues – from libraries to community halls – throughout 2021; during a time where a show about the importance of human connection and keeping in touch feels more vital than ever. Soho Theatre will see the show back in a theatre as it was originally imagined.

Written & Performed by Will Jackson (BBC Arts New Creative & Bush Theatre Emerging Writer 2019-20) Yours Sincerely was originally produced by Birmingham REP as part of their Foundry Artist development programme. This year, the show will celebrate its 4th birthday, as well as reach its 90th performance. 

Quick Duck Theatre is a Birmingham-based theatre company. Their work is ridiculous, openly queer, has a lot of heart and always has a killer soundtrack. They have recently been appointed as one of the New Vic Theatre’s KILN Associate Companies and were one of New Diorama Theatre’s Emerging Theatre companies in 2019. Their third show Fashion Spies – a queer, choose-your-own adventure show for families – debuted as part of Coventry UK City of Culture 2022 and will run ath the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August at Assembly Venues. 

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Yes! Yes! UCS!

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Townsend Theatre Productions

in association with University of Manchester, The Place Bedford,
E.I.S. and Unite the Union present

Yes! Yes! UCS!

UK National Tour, February – May 2022

A new musical play by Neil Gore celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the
Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ “Work-In” of 1971-72.

Townsend Theatre Productions present Yes! Yes! UCS!, a brand-new, musical play which chronicles the story of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders “Work-In” of 1971-72, in celebration of the 50th anniversary. Powerful theatrical storytelling combines with live rock and folk music from the early 70s and graphic art animated projection to bring a meaningful message of hope, social justice and the fight for the right to work. 

Based on verbatim interviews with shipyard workers, Yes! Yes! UCS! is the story of two women workers in an industry facing imminent closure, drawn into the monumental, heroic battle to save thousands of jobs across Glasgow and the West of Scotland. At the time, women in pivotal roles made up little more than 5% of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ workforce, and their history is far less well known. Townsend Theatre Productions’ trademark gritty drama depicts the traditions and skills of Scottish shipbuilding, while shining a light on the role women played in the fight for the right to work, the power of community solidarity, collective resistance and workers’ control. 

The show will tour from 12 February 2022 – 1 May 2022, across the UK, with dates in Salford, Sheffield, Clydebank, Irvine, Dalbeattie, Newcastle, London, Bristol, Manchester and many more. The venues for the Highlights rural touring across the north of England will be confirmed early next year. 

With the refusal by the incumbent Tory government in 1971 to invest in what they called “lame-duck” industries came the threat that the massive Glasgow and Clydebank shipyards, that made up the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS), would face closure. Shop Stewards – including well known Scottish Trade Union Activists Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie – tried a new tactic from the usual union strikes and sit-ins, resulting in the now famous UCS “Work-in”, designed to show that workers were not just willing to work, but that demand for their work existed. They argued that unemployment was a political choice made by a government more interested in maintaining the profits of corporate capitalism and breaking up a semi-nationalised industry, than in protecting the interests of their citizens. 

Yes! Yes! UCS! aims to deliver greater social, cultural and educational impact by generating complementary activities that will creatively return the spirit of the ‘Work-In’ to the communities who were actively involved in this piece of important working-class history. In addition to touring, the company will work with communities across the UK to explore historical and contemporary themes and issues that the show raises, including: workplace exploitation; redundancy; lost communities and self-esteem. Local choirs will join the production throughout the regional tour, adding their voices to the rousing songs and music that was generated at the time conveying the power and unity of the working class speaking up for themselves.

Louise Townsend directs and produces, alongside writer and performer Neil Gore. The two have collaborated across all Townsend Theatre Productions past projects. The cast are young actor/musicians Janie Thomson and Heather Gourdie; musical direction is provided by well-known cellist, Beth Porter of the Bookshop Band and Eliza Carthy’s Wayward Band; Daniella Beattie returns as lighting designer; graphic art animation is provided by Scarlett Rickard and Jonny Halifax; and emerging artist and recent RCS graduate Ruth Darling is stage and costume designer. 

Townsend Theatre Productions have an outstanding reputation for producing imaginative, entertaining, socially relevant live theatre and community education of the highest quality that reaches new audiences in areas of low cultural engagement. Previous work includes Rouse, Ye Women! (2019) – a folk ballad about Mary Macarthur and the women chainmakers of Cradley Heath striking to achieve a living wage in 1910, and We Are the Lions Mr Manager (2017) – the remarkable story of Jayaben Desai who led the 1976-8 Grunwick Film Processing Factory Strike. 

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Quick Duck Theatre presents Fashion Spies

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VAULT Festival
Saturday 5 – Sunday 6 February 2022

A queer choose-your-own, family adventure filled with deception, divas and catwalk crooks comes to London’s Vault Festival on Saturday 5 – Sunday 6 February 2022

Quick Duck Theatre presents the London debut of Fashion Spies  – originally premiered as part of Coventry City of Culture 2021 – with three performances at VAULT Festival, Saturday 5 – Sunday 6 February. 

At fashion weeks across the globe, expensive must-have items have been stolen, and every top-secret agent sent to investigate has been kidnapped! With the infamous annual Burnwell upon Twynne Fashion Week around the corner, the Secret Agency Service has no other option but to send in the spy academy’s entire undergraduate class to solve the case – that’s you!

A queer, choose-your-own adventure made for families, Fashion Spies puts audiences right into the heart of the show. Find yourself on an undercover mission as you travel around the world with Quick Duck Theatre – your choices will help to thwart the biggest threat that fashion has ever seen. The stakes and the shoulder pads have never been higher. 

Fashion Spies is written and directed by Will Jackson, co-founder and artistic director of Quick Duck Theatre. Abigail Greenwood, Eleanor Rattenbury & Jack Davies will lead the audience through the adventure, each performing multiple roles. Quick Duck Theatre has recently been appointed one of the New Vic Theatre’s Associate companies. Fashion Spies is their third production.

The company’s first show, Magic Hour: The Murder Mystery Disco! won the Best Ensemble & the Singularity of Vision awards at the National Student Drama Festival 2019. This immersive drag farce engaged with families of LGBTQ+ children at a critical point during the protests against LGBT-inclusive education, and bucked the trend for drag murder mysteries which now sees Death Drop touring the UK with stars of RuPauls Drag Race. Their second show, queer coming-of-age comedy Yours Sincerely has toured over 70 performances across the UK including a five star hit run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019. The show will tour again from February 2022. 

Fashion Spies is produced by Quick Duck Theatre with support from the New Vic Theatre, Peggy Ramsay Foundation & Arts Council England. Fashion Spies’ early development was supported by PILOT Nights, China Plate & In Good Company.

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