Manipulate festival brings puppetry and visual theatre to The Lemon Tree One of the UK's most innovative arts festivals returns to The Lemon Tree next week with a hypnotic mix of puppetry and physical theatre. Now in its seventh year, the Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival has established itself as a key platform for Scottish puppeteers, animators and film-makers. Primarily based in Edinburgh, the festival is travelling north for a second year, this time extending its programme to three powerful and diverse performances. The festival kicks off its opening weekend on this Friday with a world première from Scottish company Faux Theatre, who started out in one of Manipulate's own workshops. Their latest production Torn has been created over the past two years with financial support from Puppet Animation Scotland's Creative Fund. It combines object theatre, kinetic art and an original live score to tell the poignant and powerful story of one woman's efforts to find and experience love. As well as nurturing and showcasing homegrown talent, the festival also has a strong international pull and continues to attract visiting companies from Austria, England, Germany, the Netherlands and Russia. Manipulate's second showing on Saturday, February 1, is a UK première of Bestiaires from the highly-acclaimed Dutch company Duda Paiva. It uses an innovative fusion of modern dance, skilled puppetry and multimedia to bring statues of the Greek Gods to life in a magical, yet slightly disturbing, production. When puppetry stops being child's play With its dark subject matter, Bestiaires is aimed at older audiences and reflects one of the festival's key aims: to prove that puppetry isn't just for kids. "I think adults get as much out of it but in a different way," said the festival's artistic director, Simon Hart, who also heads up Puppet Animation Scotland. When it works it connects with something deep in our consciousness about objects that can symbolise something much more important, either emotionally or conceptually. He continued: "We live in such a visual age that we're used to picking up emotional and visual cues from other people, and I think this is an extension of that. Often a look or response to a look can be understood and appreciated more quickly and intensely than several pages of dialogue. This is certainly the case when it comes to the show closing the festival's short sojourn at The Lemon Tree: Go! by Polina Borisova. Simon added: "If there's one piece I would recommend it would be the Russian production Go! It's a beautiful piece about an old woman who is exploring and enjoying the memories of her youth and adulthood. There's no dialogue at all so it's totally visual. It's very funny and poignant. Despite being an art form that goes back thousands of years, puppetry remains a niche sub-category of visual theatre, especially in the UK. With puppetry at its fore, the festival is working hard to ensure that the art form doesn't remain in the shadows of contemporary visual theatre. "There's always a very strong and passionate audience for this type of art form but I think with the success of Warhorse, we're riding a broader wave," said Simon. There's been an increasing interest in puppetry and visual theatre for adult audiences as well. It's an art form that adult audiences can relate to very powerfully and immediately. The Manipulate Visual Arts Festival runs at The Lemon Tree from Friday, January 31, to Sunday, February 2.