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Puppet Animation Scotland presents the 10th edition of manipulate Visual Theatre Festival, Saturday 28 January – Saturday 4 February at the Traverse Theatre, its innovative international festival of visual theatre and animated film. manipulate has always strived to bring outstanding and inspiring visual theatre to Scotland to create and empower the local network of performers to drive forward visual theatre culture, and, to celebrate a decade of manipulate we are focusing on the remarkable work that is happening right here, at home in Scotland.

manipulate Visual Theatre Festival is proud to present a variety of works reliant on the physicality of the body, manipulation of objects or dependence on light rather than sound to communicate, making them accessible to the D/deaf communities we are committed in supporting. As is typical within visual theatre, it is the language rooted within movement, not words, that provides the ingress to the performances. Accessibility is increasingly important to the work that Puppet Animation Scotland does, and the 10th iteration of manipulate Visual Theatre Festival will showcase a number of performances suitable for the D/deaf community.

manipulate 2017 will host free events in which audiences are invited to see work in development, of which most performances are accessible to the D/deaf community. The Snapshots: Artists@Work events will allow unprecedented access to view work in its various stages of development. From emerging artists, to fully-fledged practitioners, Snapshots give audiences and artists alike the opportunity to explore and evaluate work when it is absolutely vital for feedback.

• Plain Sight’s Eat Me is an image-based piece of theatre about a woman who uses the dark web to find someone to eat her. Eat Me explores the ubiquitous consumption of female bodies in everyday society, the darker nature of sexual gratification and the shifting complexities of power in gender relationships. Part of Snapshots: Artists@Work, work in development.

(Saturday 28 January/ Traverse Theatre)

• Eve Klein & Sons present Cloth: an authentic physical exploration of a woman’s dreams, relationships, of her deepest and most private of selves. Created in her bedroom, Cloth is Tiffany Soirat’s first solo piece and winner of the Edinburgh Student Arts Festival 2016: Best Performer Award. Part of Snapshots: Artists@Work, work in development.

(Saturday 28 January/ Traverse Theatre)

• Choral Jam present The Body in Shadow: a visual, non-text based performance. Grounded in the interplay of shadow theatre, ensemble work and selected physical theatre techniques, this performance explores the chemical, mathematical and scientific fabric of human connection and love – love as endurance, love as science and love as psychosis. Part of Snapshots: Artists@Work, work in development.

(Saturday 28 January/ Traverse Theatre)

• Sens Equivoc present La Causeuse: a brilliantly virtuosic physical theatre piece at the crossroads of dance, mime and object theatre, describing purely through what we see a vividly poetic world of intrigue and uncertainty. Hinging on the hyper awareness of death, loneliness and mental health, La Causeuse is a crescendo of exhausting physicality.

(Tuesday 31 January/ Traverse Theatre)

• Scottish company Jordan and Skinner’s present Sanitise. Exploring our most intimate insecurities and our darkest fantasies, Sanitise is a darkly playful production without words combining physical theatre, dance and animation. Intertwining the uncomfortable worlds of guilt, shame and sexuality, through a provocatively physical performance, Sanitise works in a feminist framework to discuss notions of identity.

(Friday 3 February/ Traverse Theatre)

• Al Seed presents the terrifying Oog, exploring the veritable dark world of trauma after conflict and the mental health of a shell-shocked soldier. An award-winning performance, Oog showcases the incredible quality of physical theatre in Scotland today.

(Saturday 4 February/ Traverse Theatre)

For information on how to book tickets for manipulate Visual Theatre Festival 2017 please visit www.manipulatefestival.org. To request the access guide from the Traverse Theatre, please contact Kath Lowe (kath.lowe@traverse.co.uk) and for more information visit www.traverse.co.uk/visiting/access-guide or visit the Traverse Theatre profile page on this website.