Get Animated!
“The Festival was created to help promote the art form of puppetry, all its many different styles and techniques – to adult audiences interested in innovative visual theatre.”
Now comfortably residing at The Traverse, and fitting with Dominic Hill’s adventurous programming of new performance, programmer Simon Hart hopes that The Puppet Animation Festival can introduce new audiences to the complexity and maturity of modern puppetry.
Hart’s enthusiasm is revealed in his diverse selection. “I include as many different types of show as possible, both in technical and creative terms,” he adds. “We have some exquisite marionette work – presented in a very striking and macabre setting – by Figurentheater Tuebingen; and intriguing, allusive object theatre from Circolando.”
Puppets are often used for comedy, and the programme includes “real laugh-out-loud antics from Triukitrek using a technique that my children love on the Dick & Dom show: sticking their heads through a black curtain, so that immediately underneath their necks are those tiny, funny bodies.” It is in this re-invention of technique that puppetry opens up new approaches for adult performance.
Despite only being a week long, Hart has made the best of the time. “We have all other manner of puppetry styles and techniques in our Snapshots and Puppet Grinder Cabaret events.” Supporting the live performances are a series of films, ”from traditional stop frame work in $9.99, to the weird and wonderful combination of animation and live action in our Explorations Of Love, Death & Power Tools programme.”
Across Europe, puppetry is already taken seriously as a performance art, and the dedication of this festival aims to engage Scotland with “some really unusual and striking contemporary theatre.”