The 19th edition of Manipulate Festival – a festival of puppetry and animation – will feature its most ambitious programme to date when it takes place in February.
There are four world premieres and six Scottish premieres on stage, artists from more than 25 countries represented between film and live performance, and an increased presence in Edinburgh.
One of the highlights will be Ocho – a four metre high puppet.
Sculptor Tim Davies Design’s huge, illuminated octopus puppet, Ocho, will make its way around the city in a series of pop-up performances.
The performances will introduce some playfulness and light this February, and will give a nod to Edinburgh’s position as a coastal city. Ocho will pop up at the National Museum of Scotland on 7 February, free for everyone in Edinburgh to come and see for themselves. The octopus will then make his way down The Royal Mile to Parliament Square, lighting up the city streets and inviting all to join him on his journey.
The full programme with day to day details of what is on can be found here.
Wester Hailes
A series of inflatable puppets created by young people in Wester Hailes, who have been working with Scottish artists Ronan McMahon and Gretchen Maynard-Hahn to develop their own creations, in partnership with WHALE ARTS, will also accompany Ocho. On 6 February, Ocho and his new friends will parade through Wester Hailes, starting off at Westside Centre Shopping Centre, for a local celebration of the young people’s work.
On 8 February, audiences at the National Museum of Scotland can watch four vignettes from Bruno Gallagher’s Europe, Meine Leibe, Mon Amour which will be performed throughout the day. Inspired by memories and dreams of travels across Europe, each vignette is a journey of imagination accompanied by abstract soundscapes and elements of live and recorded music that plays with object manipulation, mask play, costume, altered movement and dance.
In partnership with Lyra, Scotland’s first theatre for children and teenagers, the work will also appear for free at Artspace in Craigmillar before its pop up at NMS to reach a wider Edinburgh audience with mesmerising, completely free visual theatre.
Excitement is building
Dawn Taylor, Artistic Director and CEO of Manipulate Arts, said: “We are really excited to be bringing a bit of the unexpected to Edinburgh’s streets and public spaces this February with extraordinary puppetry and performance which will be free for everyone in the city to enjoy. It’s been particularly special to develop our marine puppetry project in partnership with young people from Wester Hailes and WHALE Arts to celebrate Edinburgh’s identity as a coastal city, around the centrepiece of Tim Davies’ awesome 7-metre Ocho puppet.
“We’re thrilled also to announce the full lineup of shorts and features for our film programme, which includes work by filmmakers from 15 countries, and has a special focus on Scotland with our inaugural award for Scottish animators, bringing our celebration of Edinburgh and Scotland beyond to the screen as well as the streets.”
The festival will be popping up in venues all over the city, including Manipulate’s first appearances at Filmhouse, Lyra, and the National Museum of Scotland, with other shows and events in the Traverse Theatre, Studio Theatre at Capital Theatres, Dance Base, Summerhall,WHALE Arts and Out of the Blue Drill Hall.
Performances and films will be exploring themes of change and transformation from the personal to the global. A spokesperson said they will be trying to discover how “finding empathy and seeing the world through another’s eyes can open up new possibilities, and create seismic social change, unearthing moments of surprise and unpredictability in the hidden magic and playfulness of the everyday”.
Manipulate Arts – Scotland’s home for cutting-edge animation, puppetry and visual theatre – presents the festival which takes place from 4-10 February.
The full programme with day to day details of what is on can be found here.
