First booking

One of the first acts nailed down for next year's festival is Paper Cinema. Along with various collaborators, illustrator Nic Rawlings creates detailed monochrome worlds by deftly moving paper cut-outs in front of a camera. It's live animation basically, in a Captain Pugwash stylee, and beautifully done. I saw their Night Flyer/King Pest performance at Battersea Arts Centre a couple of weeks ago, and part of the fun is watching them shuffle the cut-outs. The following day I saw a play called Some Trace of Her which does something quite similar but with a whole cast of actors making a film onstage. Of the two, Paper Cinema won hands down for me. The Guardian liked it too:

"The pleasure here is not just that the animations are both sinister and enchanting, or that the wonderful music gives the whole thing the feel of a quirky silent movie, but also that you can see how the show is being made right before your eyes."