Running from 9 January-6 February 2016, London’s annual celebration of contemporary visual theatre will form the London International Mime Festival, featuring some of the most eclectic and jaw-dropping theatre audiences are likely to see on a British stage. The Festival is a unique event in the theatre calendar, with the chance to see the very best and newest contemporary visual theatre, including cutting edge circus-theatre, animation and puppetry, mask, physical and object theatre.
Over 29 days once a year, 18 invited companies will give 112 performances of productions that are almost all UK or London premieres, at the Shaw Theatre, Barbican, Central Saint Martin’s Platform Theatre, Jacksons Lane, Soho Theatre, Southbank Centre, The Peacock, and, for the first time in 2016, Tate Modern. Artists from Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, Spain and Sweden will be joining some of Britain’s fast emerging talents, as well as established names.
The Festival line-up will be complemented by workshops, films and artists’ talks, and there are notable festival highlights to anticipate. The 2016 festival opens with Marcel performed by Complicité original members, Jos Houben and Marcello Magni. A tender and witty exploration of how to get round ageing, these two distinguished performers revisit their early days with Complicité in celebrating the art of physical comedy and the beauty of the ‘gag’. Houben will also reprise his acclaimed performance-demonstration The Art of Laughter, explaining and illustrating what makes people laugh.
Belgium’s BabaFish combines circus, dance theatre and ingenious stage design in Expiry Date, a heartwarming story about the passing of time and the fading of passion. BabaFish was a winner at Europe’s prestigious Jeunes Talents Cirque competition. Australia’s world-famous acrobatic troupe Circa re-imagines Il Ritorno, Monteverdi’s great opera about loss, war and the longing to return home. This will be a spectacular fusion of show-stopping physicality, live opera and the ancient Greek story of Ulysses.
In addition to beehive hairdos, full mask theatre companies, poles balanced on fingertips, and a military orchestra, the festival looks set to delight audiences from every walk of life.