RAGNAROK, an innovative theatrical production combining intricate puppetry, live-feed camera work, and live performance, is to receive its world premiere at Stirling’s Macrobert Arts Centre on Saturday, February 3.
Two performances of the show, at 2.30pm and 7.30pm, will be followed by two next weekend in Edinburgh as part of the capital’s Manipulate Festival. The Scottish-Norwegian artistic collaboration behind the production will be reflected in Edinburgh by the attendance in the audience of the Norwegian Consul, Mona Røhne, and Deidre Brock, SNP MP for Edinburgh North and Leith.
Ragnarok will tour Scottish venues until late March.
The brand-new production depicts a miniature world of cities, mountains and valleys is populated by hundreds of hand-crafted clay figures, brought to life through live-feed camera work, recorded voices and an atmospheric immersive soundtrack, all of it posing vital questions about the human condition.
The production follows a young girl and her brother as they battle to find a promised land. Two souls in a sea of thousands, they move through a fractured world as both dream and reality crumble around them
According to Tortoise in a Nutshell, Ragnarok, “takes inspiration from Norse mythology’s cyclical tale of the same name to explore the most pressing issues of our time.
“It explores our perspectives on global crises, asking us to consider immediacy and our temptation for nihilism versus the innate human ability for hopefulness and will to survive. It is a story of fate and self-determination, mortals and gods, the world’s end and its rebirth”.
Ragnarok has been directed and designed by Tortoise in a Nutshell co-director Alex Bird and Arran Howie with composition and music performance from longtime TIAN collaborator Jim Harbourne.
Tortoise in a Nutshell on Concerned Others
Tortoise in a Nutshell’s most recent production was last year’s Edinburgh Fringe hit, Concerned Others, which in the words of The Herald, stories of people “that we don’t hear from enough: people who use drugs, people who have used drugs, those who care for them and those on the frontline trying to help”.
“Any person is susceptible to addiction of some form or another,” Alex Bird said in an interview with The Herald.
https://tortoiseinanutshell.com/
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