A magical merging of choreography and film-making, puppetry of every persuasion, Beckettian clowns, the body as manipulated object, and circus shows that deconstruct and re-asssemble the traditional skills into new forms:  this and more was seen at the London International Mime Festival by Total Theatre’s team of writers. Dorothy Max Prior reports on shows seen […]

Italian company Dewey Dell collaborates with Japanese director Kuro Tanino and visual artist Yuichi Yokoyama to create Marzo referring both to the month of March, and the god of war that month is named after. Marzo sets its audience up for a mighty and surreal work. Upon entering the Barbican Pit, we are handed ear […]

Previous work by Yngvild Aspeli, director of Ashes, includes a series of shows by UK-based company Jammy Voo, in most of which (among other things) she performed a different scene where she got into a generally-fatal battle with her own puppet. In a sense, Ashes is these theatrical moments of struggle writ large. The protagonist […]

Stephen Mottram is known for his sophisticated marionette shows for adult audiences, and also for his highly skilled analysis and performance of puppet movement and expression. The Parachute appears to have begun life as an experiment in how minimally humans can be represented, as animated figures, and still have their actions and their inner lives […]

A world within a suitcase – tall town houses, a tram, and little paper-cut people happily going about their business. A mother and daughter holding hands. A group of adults waiting at a stop. Children sitting on the pavement. A man taking a stroll. Everyday life. The female performer manipulating the little people provides an […]