Our 39th festival of touring puppetry and visual theatre for children and families has come to a close after an exciting few weeks of live performances across the country. This year’s festival has reached over 900 people with 41 shows taking place in 25 venues.
Thank you to all our venues, audiences and artists involved in this year’s programme- especially to those who had to cancel or amend their touring plans due to illness during this time.
We’ve had some fantastic feedback from venues and audiences for our 2022 performances that we wanted to share in celebration of our artists return to being on the road!
‘Best year ever! All the shows and workshops sold out and our free events in town centre brought huge crowds. The shows on offer and the timing was brilliant.’ Venue Feedback
Cat Sith – Ludic Acid’s walk about large scale Scottish wildcat drew ‘huge crowds’ to Wick and Thurso town centre’s – even making headlines in the local paper (see a fantastic set of photographs featured in the newspaper online here.)
‘My 3-year-old will not stop talking about it, has had a real wow-factor effect for her.’ Audience Feedback
Cat Sith and The Good The Bad & The Poultry offered audiences something new with walk about open air performances making up part of our programming offer this festival. These physical theatre offers paired with more traditional puppetry shows made for a great mixture of opportunities for families to get involved with across the festival.
Clydebuilt Puppet Theatre brought their artful puppetry and storytelling to outdoor audiences in Irvine through Harbour Arts and East Kilbride with South Lanarkshire Council whilst Lempen Puppet Theatre’s Flotsam and Jetsam enchanted families with an indoor performance at The Byre, St Andrews and The Brunton, Musselburgh.
‘All brilliant (both in quality and general attitude) and wonderful to have such a breadth on offer.’ Venue Feedback
Tales out the Box took Dagba’s Forest Tales into libraries in Edinburgh and up to Mintlaw in Aberdeenshire where audiences ‘absolutely loved it… the music, the pictures, the audience participation. A perfect mix between theatrical performance and interactive storytelling’.
For some young audiences this may have been the first puppetry or live performance experience they have had due to the pandemic’s impact on local venues – the local bairns banter group in Carpshairn was out in force to see Nettles in the Garden by The Travelling Shadow Theatre at Lagwyne Hall with support from CatStrand; whilst at WHALE Arts in Edinburgh West, young audiences who saw Oscar and the Quest for the Underground Princess from Mousetale Puppets said ‘That was the best puppet show we have ever seen!’
Ruxy Cantir and Sarah Rose Graber made their way all over the country with Two in a Barrel delighting audiences with a finale sell out shows at Moat Brae in Dumfries with support from DG Arts Festival to finish off the festival in style!
We’re looking forward to sharing plans for evolving our festival to offer more opportunities through the year to see touring puppetry work for families – stay tuned for updates on our national touring programme plans and join our artists network to find out about our latest opportunities for sharing your work with audiences.