LATE every January arts lovers are treated to Manipulate, Edinburgh’s annual festival of visual theatre and animation. Wonderfully diverse, exciting and international in its programming, the event is a welcome distraction from the winter blues.
However, this year, with Covid continuing to plague our society, the festival’s organisers have had to make big changes. It has been something of a baptism of fire for Dawn Taylor, who only took the reins as artistic
director of Puppet Animation Scotland (producers of Manipulate) in August of last year.
She may have inherited an “oven-ready” programme from her predecessor, Simon Hart, but the pandemic has put the kibosh on the live art that usually makes up a large part of the festival. Initially, when Manipulate’s 2021 offering was announced in the middle of November of last year, Taylor’s plan was a “hybrid programme” comprising Restless Worlds (an exciting series of “artwalks”) and 15 online digital works.
However, even the best laid plans of Covid-conscious festival producers are vulnerable to the ever-changing requirements of the public health emergency. In the week just passed it was suddenly announced that, due to coronavirus restrictions, the entire Restless Worlds programme was being put on hold.
The project – in which audiences are due to encounter kinetic sculptures on the streets of Scotland’s three largest cities – was supposed to already be under way in Edinburgh, with dates coming up in Aberdeen and Glasgow next month. However, conscious of the seriousness of the current lockdown, Taylor and her team decided to postpone the artwalks until restrictions are loosened sufficiently for them to go ahead.
In addition to the mothballing of Restless Worlds, Eat Me, a filmed performance by theatre company Snap-Elastic, has been put back to next years festival. This leaves Manipulate with a pared back, entirely digital programme.
Nonetheless, Taylor is pleased that the festival is managing to go ahead, despite the ravages of Covid. “It’s funny, even with digital, how much longer and more complicated processes are this year”, she says. “But it is really great we are able to offer something.”
That offer is now an online programme of 14 Scottish and international works. These include the South African piece The Lonely Sailor Weather Report, which contemplates amphibious living. A collaboration between animation, theatre and puppet artists, it promises to be a bleakly comic and metaphorical reflection on the current crises of humanity.
Scotland-based theatre-maker Tashi Gore (of Glass Performance and Junction 25 fame) presents The Yellow Canary, which is based upon the true story of a child fleeing war. Created with playwright Will Gore and theatre-maker Ross MacKay, the piece follows the travails of Bernard, a Jewish child who has to flee Paris accompanied by his parents and his pet canary.
Manipulate also hosts the Edinburgh Short Film Festival, an international series of 10 short animated movies. These include Trap, Paul James’s award-winning film about a young girl’s journey of self-discovery in rural New Zealand in the 1950s.
For Taylor, the importance of going ahead with this year’s digital programme lies in the human connection art can create, even when we are largely confined to our homes. “This last year has shown how important culture is to our lives”, she comments.
“We all miss the opportunity to be together, but we thought it important to deliver this. I think, evidently, people need that cultural engagement and it is as much about that moment of coming together as it is about sharing great art.”
The Manipulate digital programme runs from January 29 until February 7. For further information and to gain access to events, head over to manipulatefestival.org
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