LOTTE

Wednesday 30.08 19.00 – TICKETS

At Oslo Fringe last year, Akimbo won everyone's hearts and the award for best performance. This year, they are therefore honored to open the festival with a preview of their new show, "LOTTE." On Sunday, they will conclude the festival with last year's audience hit, "NO ONE."

Against the dark, progressive and glittering background of 1920s Berlin, Lotte Reiniger changed the world of animation and filmmaking forever. A full 11 years before Disney made Snow White she pioneered the multiplane shadow puppetry techniques still used today, and showed the world that animation could be its own medium, turning fairytales into feature length magic. Akimbo’s new production of “LOTTE” tells her story of overcoming extraordinary odds, in the midst of one of the most unique periods in history.

Berlin in the 1920s was a burgeoning world of new thinking and bold creativity, with no code of what could or could not be made into film. There was an unprecedented eruption of queer culture, with openly gay clubs, drag nights, pioneering new science, and an extraordinary jewish community of doctors, theater makers and philosophers. Films were showing radical new ideas, and though over 90% was lost to the Nazi’s fires, including much of Lotte’s original work, many iconic pieces survived to this day. Her feature film originally included a gay kiss between the Emperor and his Favorite, which was later edited out.

The show will explore light and shadow, animation and live performance, cabaret, mime, swashbuckling sword fights and Akimbo’s trademark blend of movement and theater. This show will be an opportunity to bring film history, female led history and queer history through a touching, funny and thrilling performance to anyone 12+.

COMPANY

Akimbo is a physical theatre company founded at Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq in 2021. Our work is violent, beautiful and comic with an innovative creative language that blends storytelling and physical theatre with martial arts, movement, clown, and the absurd. We are a devising company from an internationally diverse background. Each of the seven company members brings a different strength to the group, in an open collaborative process to develop new and unique performances.

Cast: Pierre Moullier, Halvor Schultz, Florian Wiedenbach, Jonathan Ben-Shaul, Rosanna Malinson, Owen Bleach, Lexie Baker