VALUES
VALUES
Animikii Theatre is a Manchester based theatre company making original theatre inspired by existing stories. Animikii was created in 2014 by Adam Davies and Henry McGrath.
We make original theatre inspired by existing stories that are fearlessly re-imagined. We create worlds that physically and viscerally take our audiences to the edge of new experiences. Each production differs from the last while retaining Animikii’s essential characteristics: highly visual, intensely visceral, emotionally cathartic.
CREATE
We aim to create bold productions where artistic risk is always taken and the widest range of intensity, personality and expression are viewed as a necessity. We create stories from forgotten times through body, text, song but seek to touch our audiences with the immediacy of the present.
INVENT
Expressive training is at the centre of everything we do and make. Sharing our training with the imagination of many different minds and bodies from a vast set of experiences is imperative to grow and challenge what we make and how we make it.
COLLABORATE
We are a theatre company seeking to redefine its own voice and vision by celebrating new voices. This means challenging ourselves by collaborating with the highest quality emerging and established local, national and international artists.
OUR STORY
OUR STORY
Our Story
The word ‘Animikii’ (ani-mee-kee) is the story of mother and child.
The child afraid of the night’s storm goes to their mother for protection. To soothe them she tells the story of the great spirit bird in the skies giving them protection; the thunder as the flap of its wings, the lightning as the blinking of its eyes.
We chose this name with a few factors in mind; its associations with ‘new beginnings,’ its feel and rhythm, its shape and structure, giving a sense of the animal and the animated. For us it is a symbol for the protecting and hopeful act of story-telling. That each story must hold dark and light, fear and hope.
Animikii began life in 2014 as a vehicle to explore the blurring of lines between mythological and historical stories and our own experiences.
We would create processes that experimented with improvisation, weaving new & existing writing, devising, personal memories and the imagination to uncover experiences that are intensely felt. Adam and Henry spent 12 months after their training at RADA seeking a place to arrive in the theatre landscape. The mission was to bring a responsive and fearless laboratory theatre company to the North West of the UK. Both had personal experience of the theatre scene in Manchester due their under-graduate training and previous work in the North-West, so chose Manchester as that place to land and grow the work of Animikii.
We were commissioned by The Lowry Theatre, Spot On Lancashire and Cheshire Rural Touring in 2016 and made our debut production Origins which premiered at The Lowry Theatre (2015) before playing the 'A Nation's Theatre' festival at The Southbank Centre (2016), touring to six rural touring venues and later earned the ‘Pick of the Fringe’ award (Voice Magazine) at Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2017). The play enjoyed further nationwide and international tours (2016-18) engaging with 1300 people over 33 performances.
It was at this point that we arrived and we wrote our Manifesto which you can read below. We continue to bring exciting work to the UK and beyond for many more years to come.