PRESS RELEASE
….. October 2012
37th LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL
10 - 27 January 2013
ART-CIRCUS, AERIAL ACROBATICS, ILLUSION AND PSYCHODELIC
PUPPETRY HEADLINE LONDON’S ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF
CONTEMPORARY VISUAL THEATRE
London’s annual celebration of contemporary visual theatre opens on Thursday 10th January 2013
with the latest show from leading British aerial theatre company, Ockham’s Razor.The venue is the
stunning Platform Theatre, part of the new, University of the Arts complex in the Capital’s buzzing
King’s Cross development.
Ockham’s Razor’s Not Until We Are Lost is the first in a 18 day season of dynamic and unusual
performance by 15 British and overseas’ companies.
In this 37th edition of the Festival, other venues will be Barbican Pit and Theatre, Jacksons Lane,
Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House, Roundhouse Studio, Soho Theatre and
Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room and Queen Elizabeth Hall.
At the Barbican Pit, Yeung Fai’s Hand Stories tells the true story of a young boy’s escape from China
to the West, when the ancient craft of puppetry, handed down through five generations of his
family, was banned as decadent during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. In Amit Drori’s Savanna, Israeli
visual theatre artists create a mysterious African landscape, a Garden of Eden filled with beautiful,
hand-crafted, mechanical sculptures – elephants, giant tortoises, caterpillars, moths and snakes –
that seem to come straight out of Leonardo da Vinci’s imagination.
In the Barbican Theatre, Switzerland’s Zimmermann & de Perrot bring Hans Was Heiri and make
their fourth appearance at the Mime Festival in a large-scale piece of circus-theatre with live DJ
music. It’s funny, fascinating, and frequently almost physically impossible.
At Jacksons Lane, London’s centre for young circus-theatre artists, Italian performer Simone
Riccio presents Nothing Moves If I Don’t Push It, a German wheel solo that 'explores his need to
keep pushing, against his desire to let go'.
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At Roundhouse Studio Theatre, Birmingham-based Stan’s Cafe’s The Cardinals is an extraordinary,
enlightening, animation-theatre gallop through the Bible, the Crusades and events of modern day
Middle East politics.
At the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre, Belgium’s world famous Les Ballets C de la
B brings the UK premiere of The Old King, a searing, new piece of movement theatre featuring
Portuguese performer Romeu Runa.
At the same venue, Gandini Juggling returns with Smashed it’s acclaimed Pina Bausch homage for
nine performers, eighty apples and vast quantities of crockery, and Russia’s brilliant butoh-mimeclown group, Derevo, presents a very different view of commedia dell’arte hero, Harlekin.
At Soho Theatre there’s new work from two exciting British puppetry and animation companies.
Blind Summit give the world premiere of The Heads, their follow-up to last year’s sold-out hit, The
Table. Invisible Thread (formerly Faulty Optic) give the London premiere of Les Hommes Vides, a
twenty-five minute, low tech, eerie and comic performance featuring slapstick. object theatre, prizes
and surreal table-top puppetry.
At Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room, there’s dark and witty, punk circus from France’s My!Laika,
and in Wolfe Bowart’s Letter’s End, a dreamlike journey down memory lane and into physical
comedy, illusion, shadow puppetry and interactive film. Both shows are UK premieres. Also at the
Purcell Room, and making its London premiere, the Edinburgh Fringe multiple award-winner,
Circle of Eleven’s Leo, takes physical theatre to creative and imaginative heights, throwing you
upside down, tilting you sideways and messing with your head in the most glorious, brain-tickling
way.
At Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, French visual theatre star Aurélien Bory’s
Compagnie 111 brings Plan B, his thrilling mix of circus, dance, video, sonic object manipulation
and optical illusion, direct from a month-long run in Paris.
The artistic directors of the London International Mime Festival are Helen Lannaghan and Joseph
Seelig.
Full programme details, including workshops artists’ talks, available at www.mimelondon.com
from 24th October and a free festival brochure is available from 5th December by contacting 020 7637
5661.
The 2013 London International Mime Festival gratefully acknowledges financial assistance from
Arts Council England.
For further information contact Anna Arthur/Andrew Greer at Arthur Leone PR on 020 7836 7660 /
07973 264373/ anna@arthurleone.com
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