Against the subversive background of 1920’s Berlin, Lotte Reiniger pioneered groundbreaking new methods of animation and filmmaking . The story of this ‘Queen of Silhouettes’ is coming to Lakeside later this month. Beverley Makin shares why this production matters...
Later this month I will have the pleasure of attending Akimbo Theatre’s latest production ‘The Animator’. ‘The Animator’ looks at the life and works of Lotte Reiniger, an artist and film maker in 1920s Germany. I am familiar with her work but didn’t know her name so I sent a few questions to Akimbo Theatre asking about their choice of topic and about themselves as a relatively new theatre company formed in 2021.
The Akimbo Theatre Company are an awarding winning UK/Norway based group who bring a diverse range of experience and skills to the table. What brought them together, and I suspect makes them stand out, is the physical nature of their productions. The company was founded at l’Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq. The Lecoq acting technique focuses on the relationship between movement and acting, encouraging playfulness, improvisation and a great deal of movement. In their own words ‘We are an international group of creators who all came together to create new and exciting pieces of theatre. We have always been interested in ‘action’ as a genre and integrating that physical dynamic with our eclectic taste in stories’.
Berlin was a hotbed of innovative art, film, theatre and music but also on the precipice of troubling and dangerous times.
So, I’m not in for any ordinary production but the next question is why Lotte Reiniger? Her work was introduced to the group by one of the company’s founding members Jonathan Ben-Shaul. On viewing her work the company, like me, felt they had seen her images or something similar before. Another thing that piqued their creative interest was the backdrop of 1920s Germany, specifically Berlin. Berlin was a hotbed of innovative art, film, theatre and music but also on the precipice of troubling and dangerous times. She was for a time drawn in to the Reich’s propaganda machine so prominent was her work. Reiniger is remembered for her immense contribution to film, shadow puppetry and animation as well as laying some foundations for later special effects and cinematography which are often wrongly credited to Walt Disney. All of this sealed the deal as the company decided she needed to be written back in to history.
Now we have a subject I was keen to know how ‘The Animator’ came together. The company began by improvising with movement and of course shadow to try to discover the ideal direction. They also researched 1920s Berlin and more of Lotte’s works and images. The production needed to follow a timeline of true events. Akimbo received help from Nordland Visual Theatre who built sets and other resources further cementing the look and direction of the production. Characters were established and then the company’s trademark physicality developed. All Lecoq trained, so movement and energy are guaranteed but new elements including puppets and quick costume changes added some challenges as did the music and projections used to tell the story of this somewhat forgotten cinematic powerhouse of a woman.
The first iteration of ‘The Animator’ was the Oslo Fringe in 2023, changes and additions since make it an exciting production. There is so much more I could say about Akimbo Theatre and Lotte Reiniger but I’ll wait until I see it on the 27th February.
The Animator performs at Lakeside Arts on Thursday February 27th 2025.
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