As you're on Run-Riot, reading this Q&A - you'll already be savvy to this sentiment: 'today's avant garde is very often tomorrow's mainstream!' That's right, you know it - and you couldn't be at a better place, reading up on what's to come. Welcome to LIMF 2013, eighteen days of wonderful art-circus, illusion, animatronics, extraordinary puppetry, dark clown theatre – and more. Run-Riot caught up with co-directors Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan to hear about their festival highlights. There's something for everybody - from the newcomer to the more brazen audience member - it's all here. London International Mime Festival, 10-27 January 2013 at various locations.

RR: For the newcomer to the festival which show(s) would you recommend?
Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan: We'd recommend Compagnie 111's Plan B - it's a highly skilled, engaging piece of theatre - funny at turns, clever, satisfying and wonderful to watch. No mime cliches here - a great way to introduce people to the possibilities of contemporary visual theatre. There's also wonderful and very accessible circus-theatre in Zimmermann & de Perrot's Hans Was Heiri, and lots of mind-boggling visual trickery and 'wow factor' in Circle of Eleven's Leo.

RR: What would you recommend for the more brazen audience? When you programme - can you be true to your taste?
Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan: Undoubtedly, that's les ballets C de la B's The Old King at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre - raw, powerful, hard core! It's challenging in the best way, and affecting. This is a famous company, in demand all over the world, and we're really delighted to have the UK premiere of their latest show. And of course there's also Derevo's Harlekin - unusual, gripping, and a far cry from the traditional Harlequin stories. Anyone who knows the work of this Russian group from its many, award-winning, Edinburgh Fringe and previous Mime Festival appearances will certainly concur.
 
As for how we programme, that's a more complex issue. It can't just be a matter of our own personal taste - first you have to understand the varying taste of your audience and know how you can both engage them and hopefully, stretch them. It's not one homogenous audience, although there are people who go to almost everything, so we programme knowing that there are people who specifically love Russian avant garde work, or puppetry and object theatre, or circus-theatre, or clown-theatre, etc. It's also a matter of shows that sit comfortably within each venue's programming tastes and the technical possibilities available there. We know the festival appeals to people with very different tastes, including that for unusual and offbeat work. In that, we're lucky. And over the years we've seen that today's avant garde is very often tomorrow's mainstream!

RR: Not everyone speaks mime - will there be a translator for the 'meet the artist' evenings?
Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan: Rest assured, there will be a translator available... these performances are usually the first to sell-out and are very well attended. There's a genuine and massive interest in the artists and their work, so this is a great opportunity to talk directly to them. Weirdly, the best speaker we ever had was Marcel Marceau - go figure!

RR: Can you tell us about the workshops?
Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan: We run a series of workshops alongside the shows that feature either visiting performers, short tasters of longer courses (e.g. LISPA) or LIMF regulars like Angela de Castro. This year we are very happy to be featuring a (sold out!) course by Toby Sedgwick who did the movement for War Horse and who is currently in Complicite's show at the Barbican. He was originally part of Moving Picture Mime Show, a company that was hugely successful at the start of the Mime Festival in the late 70's. The boy done good!

RR: What is the timeless quality of 'mime' that captivates audiences year after year?
Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan: Timeless, yes it is timeless. True, there are museum pieces out there, but that's absolutely not what interests us and you won't find that work in our festival. We are interested in contemporary visual theatre - work that reflects our modern world and that often uses the latest technology as part of it. People remark on the nature of our audiences - cross-generational, cosmopolitan and pretty damn cool! This year's festival opens at The Platform Theatre, part of the University of the Arts and the site of the new Central St Martins College of Arts and Deign - we can't think of a more appropriate setting.

RR: We have to ask - who's strings would you like to pull and why (open to interpretation)?
Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan: Oh, Gerry Anderson, one last time. RIP Gerry.

London International Mime Festival
10-27 January 2013
at various locations around London
mimelondon.com
@mimelondon
Facebook.com/MIMELONDON
 

Read our earler Q&A's with LIMF co-Directors Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan.

LIMF 2011

LIMF 2012