Animo

The bastard child of puppetry and improvisation.

Animo has always been of great importance to the company and this work is at the heart of the Improbable philosophy. Newspapers become swans, bristle bare brushes become creatures from the swamp and characters are (literally) constructed before your very eyes. Animo is a puppetry performance like no other: no script, no set, just a range of everyday materials, five improvisers and a completely different show every night.

“In Animo, we do scenes with no puppetry, and scenes with puppetry, then scenes with no puppetry, then scenes with puppetry… Sometimes they collide and sometimes they don’t, sometimes they make one story and sometimes they make two stories and sometimes they just make sketches. We don’t have a structure that we’re aiming for or a structure that we have. We just try to get out of the way and let the show be whatever the show decides it wants to be.”

— Artistic Director Lee Simpson

Animo was first performed at Battersea Arts Centrem London in 1996. It has been performed across the UK and also at Euro-Scene Leipzig; Festival Images, Neerpelt and Instant Cafe, Kuala Lumpur; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Created by Julian Crouch, Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson
Photography by Keith Pattison

Most recently been performed by Guy Dartnell, Mark Down, Steve Edis (music), Colin Grenfell (lights), Sean Garratt, Alex Murdoch and Lee Simpson