Manipulate Festival 2026 presents 10 groundbreaking works of puppetry and visual performance on stage. Five brand-new works from Scottish and Scotland-based creatives make their premiere, all of whom have received support and development from Manipulate Arts throughout their careers, ranging from seed funding to work in progress presentations as part of the festival’s long running Snapshots series.
Manipulate Art’s commitment to nurturing homegrown visual theatre talent sees the Festival present Four World and one Scottish premiere from top class Scottish makers. A further five Scottish premieres come from leading International companies, whose work brings a global outlook to the festival, asking universal questions of our world.
Acclaimed performance artist Mamoru Iriguchi and Vanishing Point return to the festival with the World Premiere of Size Matters, a wildly inventive blend of puppetry, science and surrealism. Joined on stage by puppet versions of themselves, Mamoru and Julia take a mind-bending journey through time, size and perception to explore how we convey the importance of the things in life that feel big or small. Manipulate Arts has supported the development of Size Matters from the very seedlings of an idea to full fruition.
Returning to Manipulate Festival after 2023’s incredibly successful The Chosen Haram, the Sadiq Ali Company (led by Edinburgh-native Sadiq Ali)presents the Scottish Premiere of Tell Me – a cutting edge three-hander narrative circus offering a fresh perspective on HIV. Combining Chinese Pole and aerial artistry, Tell Me showcases an innovative, multi-dimensional cube structure, exploring connection to the self, to friends, to community in the face of stigma and silence.
Disaster Plan,led by Julia Taudevin and Kieran Hurley, will kick off a Spring tour of Auntie Empire as part of Manipulate Festival – an outrageous, dark satire on Britannia and the grotesque absurdity of imperial self-regard. Taudevin is Auntie, blending bouffon, comedy, and audience interaction into a bloody lampoon on the myths of nationhood.
The Raft of the Crab, presented by circus artist Ninon Noiret,is a captivating exploration of life first being diagnosed with, and then recovering from, cancer. Working in collaboration with celebrated Scottish puppeteer Gavin Glover, the show seamlessly blends puppetry, contemporary dance, spoken text and Chinese Pole to navigate the deeply personal experience of illness, told with perseverance and play.
Bruno Gallagher’s Europe, Meine Liebe, Mon Amour: A performance in Five Absurdities fuses together five absurdist vignettes of physical performance through the mediums of object manipulation, mask play, costume, altered movement and dance. Inspired by memories and dreams of travels across Europe, the work is a journey of imagination accompanied by abstract soundscapes and elements of live and recorded music. As well as free performances at Lyra, vignettes will pop-up for free in city.
Tickets for the 2026 festival are on sale now. Find about the full programme here.
