We are thrilled to announce the launch of the programme for MANIPULATE 2021, our innovative festival of international, award-winning puppetry, visual theatre and animated film.
The festival will take place across two platforms which represent new ways of working for MANIPULATE – a dynamic Digital Festival crammed with performance, workshops, screenings and talks, and an immersive new kinetic sculpture artwalk, with commissioned moving artworks and soundscapes by eight Scottish-based artists visiting three cities across Scotland.
Situated in the darkness of the long Scottish winter, each year MANIPULATE Festival brings audiences together to experience boundary-pushing visually led work, and to share artistic practice. With the coming winter shaping up to be a particularly long and dark one, we recognise that the need for a spark of connection is greater than ever.
In these circumstances, we wanted to create a programme which would enable us to collaborate with the widest range of Scotland’s visual performance artists, puppeteers and animators. The artists and works that we present to you this year offer provocation, renewal and escapism. The works speak in many ways most strongly to finding connection – with one another, with the world around us and with the self within.
MANIPULATE Festival 2021 is also a space for experimentation, to play with new ways of making and of experiencing work. The programme comprises an exciting blend of artists who were originally lined up to perform their works live in Edinburgh at MANIPULATE, and have instead adapted their work to film or are experimenting in a digital space, alongside artists whose work was specifically created for an online context in the COVID-19 era.
In this year’s festival we will present:
22 FILMS
12 PRODUCTIONS of which 5 are WORKS-IN-PROGRESS
8 KINETIC SCULPTURE ARTWORKS
3 WORKSHOPS
1 FESTIVAL SOCIAL EVENT
We are so excited to share this dynamic range of work with you and to bring artistic experiences to audiences across Scotland and the world. We can’t wait to see you in early 2021.