I spoke to Simon Hart about manipulate a few years ago. Here's the transcript...
Initially the festival was created to help promote the art form of puppetry – in all its many different styles and techniques – to adult audiences interested in innovative visual theatre. Throughout the UK puppetry is seen very much as something for children and as a result I think many adults lose out on seeing some really unusual and striking contemporary theatre. Manipulate also provides Puppet Animation Scotland with a valuable opportunity to provide significant creative and skills development opportunities for Scotland’s professional puppeteers. The sector is a strong and confident one, particularly in their provision of work for children and young people. Over the past decade the sector has presented its work – either as performances or workshops – to over 1500,000 people in the UK, more than 1000,000 in Scotland. Nearly half of this work takes places in schools.
The sector is a little less confident about creating work for adult audiences, and this is true not just for Scotland but for the whole of the UK. Puppeteers in Europe have many more opportunities – primarily through festivals – to make shows for this audience. This is an infrastructure that we are in the early stages, through manipulate, of emulating. Bringing work from abroad to Scotland allows our audiences and professional puppeteers to interact in a meaningful way with the best international practitioners. We are confident that Scottish puppeteers are becoming increasingly inspired - as a result of seeing all this great theatre – to begin to create their own work for adult audiences that can then travel back out to the rest of the world. Thats our aspiration anyway!
The quality of the work is a given, and I also try to include as many different types of show a possible, both in technical and creative terms. So this year we have some exquisite marionette work – presented in a very striking and macabre setting – by Figurentheater Tuebingen; intriguing, allusive object theatre from Circolando (Quarto Exterior); and real laugh-out-loud antics from Triukitrek using a technique that my children love on the Dick & Dom show, where, sticking their heads through a black curtain, so that immediately underneath their necks are those tiny, funny bodies. We have all other manner of puppetry styles and techniques in our Snapshots and Puppet Grinder Cabaret events. The animation programme also covers a whole gamut, from more traditional stop frame work in $9.99, to beautiful black and white drawing in Renaissance, to wierd and wonderful combination of animation and live action in our Explorations Of Love, Death & Power Tools programme
How do you see the festival in relationship to the Traverse's overall programming?
I think the Festival provides a complementary style of work to much of the Traverse’s that is primarily text based. Dominic is very enthusiastic about the productions we bring to Scotland and I believe his programming for the venue at other times of the year shows that he wants to encourage Traverse audiences to experiment with and experience as many different types of theatre and performing arts as he can fit into the spaces
What is it about animation and puppetry that makes it unique as an art form- is there anything it expresses more coherently than other forms of drama?
Both art forms allow the artist to create pictures and place characters in situations that are not normally possible on stage because of the physical limitations our bodies – and the size of the performing space – place upon the creator....unless you have a very big budget and almost unlimited resources! I think this helps to free up the artist’s imagination and makes the inevitable gap between conception and realisation a little narrower. It’s easier to create complete worlds into which audiences can then enter and, having done so, they then can enter a story and its context more totally
Are there any particular Scottish puppet performers that you are excited by at the moment? What is it about their work?
As I said before Scottish puppeteers create the overwhelming amount of their work for children. In this arena Shona Reppe makes the most marvellous work, which this year in touring to Israel and twice to Australia. Puppet State’s production “The Man Who Planted Trees” is off to the USA for nearly three months too, so in Scotland, in puppetry, we have the artists with the imagination, the ambition and the ability to create work of the highest quality. It’s our job to help them, and other equally gifted artists, to find the means to follow their creative impulses when making work for adult audiences. Increasingly Scottish puppeteers want to challenge themselves by making work both for adults as well as children
How does the festival stand in relation to your work during the rest of the year?
manipulate and the Puppet Animation Festival cater for our two different audiences – adult and children. They both in their different ways help us to help the professional sector in Scotland achieve great things, and they act as a showcase for exciting work that inspires and nourishes the imagination. We also provide other meaningful and practical opportunities for practitioners to develop their artistry and their technical skills through our funding schemes. Both festivals also provide the whole sector with a chance to get together before and after events to share information and offer mutual support and encouragement, as well as a great deal of enjoyment!
As I said before Scottish puppeteers create the overwhelming amount of their work for children. In this arena Shona Reppe makes the most marvellous work, which this year in touring to Israel and twice to Australia. Puppet State’s production “The Man Who Planted Trees” is off to the USA for nearly three months too, so in Scotland, in puppetry, we have the artists with the imagination, the ambition and the ability to create work of the highest quality. It’s our job to help them, and other equally gifted artists, to find the means to follow their creative impulses when making work for adult audiences. Increasingly Scottish puppeteers want to challenge themselves by making work both for adults as well as children
How does the festival stand in relation to your work during the rest of the year?
manipulate and the Puppet Animation Festival cater for our two different audiences – adult and children. They both in their different ways help us to help the professional sector in Scotland achieve great things, and they act as a showcase for exciting work that inspires and nourishes the imagination. We also provide other meaningful and practical opportunities for practitioners to develop their artistry and their technical skills through our funding schemes. Both festivals also provide the whole sector with a chance to get together before and after events to share information and offer mutual support and encouragement, as well as a great deal of enjoyment!
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