We are delighted to be welcoming back Manipulate Festival over the next couple of weeks as they bring the best of international animation, puppetry and visual theatre to Scotland.

It is always a joy to have Manipulate back at the Traverse, this time with the 17th edition of their festival, which features an extravagant range of performances and creative opportunities on offer throughout the city. Having hosted Manipulate events in our spaces for many years now, we are proud to be strengthening our partnership further and supporting the boundary pushing work that the festival has to offer.

The performances bursting onto our stages as part of the 2024 festival will see conventions broken, limits reimagined and stories told in fresh and exciting ways, with triple the number of productions making their way to the Traverse, compared to that of 2023.

The first productions to hit the Traverse stage this week are The House by Sofie Krog Teater, a comically chilling puppet performance making its Scottish premiere, and Plinth by Al Seed, a poetic exploration of statues as artefacts of war which has been making its way around Scotland over the past few months to great acclaim!

On Sun 4 Feb we have two performances of Envahisseurs (Invaders) from Compagnie Bakélite which takes inspiration from the science fiction films of the 1950s and will create an alien invasion film right here, down in Traverse 2!

Then next week the UK's foremost circus theatre company, Ockham's Razor, bring Tess, an adaptation of of Hardy's classic novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, reimagined through a feminist lens. This is then followed by Ragnarok from multi-award winning Scottish theatre company Tortoise in a Nutshell who will create a bold, haunting and multisensory theatrical world inspired by Norse mythology.

Finally, we couldn't see Manipulate off without a party, and that's exactly what we're getting with Ruxy Cantir's Pickled Republic, a surreal theatrical cabaret - the only performance to come with allergen warnings!

That's sure to have peaked your interest, so why not have a browse of all the events in full that are making their way to the Traverse as part of Manipulate Festival over the next couple of weeks and join us in celebrating the very best of international animation, puppetry and visual theatre coming to Edinburgh.

Explore the Manipulate Festival events we have coming up.

Manipulate Festival 2024 runs from Thu 1 – Sun 11 February at venues across Edinburgh.