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.”
