Puppet State: Manipulate Festival 2014

Curated by Puppet Animation Scotland, the cultural authority promoting the artforms of puppetry and animation, manipulate has been running since 2008. Calling itself a 'visual theatre festival,' its programming is vast and can range from straight puppetry to complex works at the intersection of live performance, film, and animation.

Over the past six years, manipulate has built connections with various countries and their relevant festivals, and hence attracts artists from far and wide. This international link brings in new ideas, but also allows Scotland-based artists to travel. As a consequence, the festival showcases a high quality of Scottish and international work.

Dutch company DudaPaiva present the UK premiere of their latest production, Bestiaires, which sees the ancient Greek Gods out on the road. Toying with mythology, magic, and transformation, the Gods seek to entertain, although they are about to discover the boundaries of the human condition. Of course, as Gods performing for the benefit of humans – essentially a representation of mythical representations – the absurdity of the situation allows the rules, perceptions, and conventions of human behaviour to be stretched, bent, and broken.

Another UK premiere, Polina Borisova’s Go! looks at old age, and the solitude that comes with retiring further and further into fond, fragmented memories. Towards the end of life, looking back at the good times appears to become much easier than anticipating what lies ahead.

A company closer to home, Edinburgh-based Tortoise in a Nutshell – winners of a Scotsman Fringe First Award in August 2013 for Feral – are making an appearance with Grit. True to its name, the production tries to discuss the consequences of children being caught in war, while manipulating a variety of theatrical techniques to tell the story. The company have been going since 2009, making them one of the youngest puppetry companies in Scotland.

While the Scottish puppetry scene doesn't seem particularly vast, the fact that the National Theatre of Scotland is beginning to put together works like Dragon in collaboration with Vox Motus – of Slick fame – and the People's Theatre China seems like a hint at the incredible value and popularity of puppetry in today's theatrical realm. Also, the National Theatre's touring production of Warhorse, featuring the Handspring Puppetry Company, arrives in Edinburgh during manipulate. Based on the Michael Morpurgo novel, the production follows one boy's struggle to find and stay with his pet horse when it is enlisted for the First World War.

With these performances and many more – not forgetting the films, and workshops – manipulate foregrounds puppetry in its representation of visual theatre. That is not to say the narrative is irrelevant, but the striking images are the ones that have more impact. As a sub-category of visual theatre, puppetry is traditionally associated with the notorious Punch and Judy hand puppets, or even Pinocchio. But recently, it's been given a makeover and is often referred to as 'object manipulation,' since even the most basic everyday items can be used as puppets, so long as spectators engage with them. After all, as demonstrated by Theatre Temoin's The Fantasist or Boris and Sergey during the 2013 Fringe, the puppet's physical characteristics do not have to be clearly defined, and exist more in the onlooker's mind than in the physical realm of the performance. The puppet itself becomes a representation of an idea or character.

Puppets and animation have been used across the ages for various purposes – the most exciting often being the direct or 'indirect' defiance of an oppressive political regime, when freedom of expression is compromised. Often considered an artform for children, puppetry is in fact a rich and complex tradition that can speak to adult audiences too, much in the way graphic novels can address themes that elevate them above children's comics. Oft-cited examples like Persepolis and Maus showcase the visual medium as an ideal platform for narration and reiterate the idea that animation and comics can be an incredibly powerful tool to encourage ideas and provoke thought.

It's clear manipulate this year is showcasing the richness of puppetry and animation, which is already becoming fashionable in the mainstream for reasons which remain unclear. Both the National Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland are promoting puppetry-based shows, which require highly specialised knowledge and, with their weighty topics and huge budgets, are referred to as 'blockbusters' by the press. Perhaps it allows them to touch that 'dream' demographic of young people; from a consumerist point of view, doing a blockbuster production well could ensure or reinforce a theatregoer's positive theatre experience, and so provide reason for the theatregoer to revisit and spend more. Thus these shows could be considered simply intelligent investment.

On a less cynical level, it could be that both these two companies – and many more – have realised the genre still has a lot of potential for both tragic and comical storytelling. Either way, manipulate is doing a great deal for opening up the vast range of the puppetry community to the broader theatre community.