Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Peregrinations
Dutch Kills Theater Company
Genre: Physical Theatre, Puppetry
Venue: Assembly Roxy
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Created from interviews and the lived experiences of an international ensemble, the piece uses masks, puppetry and poetic movement to illuminate border crossings, exile, the search for belonging and the barriers imposed by others.
Review
A beautiful lyrical opening sets the tone for this important story, which is based on real encounters and situations of displacement. An international cast brings to life stories about immigration and immigrant experiences. Told without spoken words, this company express themselves non verbally through physical movement and action.
Four white boards reappear often but become many locations and objects. This is the entire stage set! Actors wearing masks enter and exit as if reacting automatically according to how they have been told to behave and react. A mother comes along, without a mask, and it is clear that she and her small child are living in another world, a world that is free. The contrast between the two worlds is stark and reminds us of the formal and strict ways immigration works in today’s world.
The masks worn by these actors are exaggerated large white masks often used in mask training and creative projects, originating from Basel festivals in Switzerland, where they are painted with colourful facial expressions. The facial features of the plain white masks are large but with a certain naïveté, which works perfectly for the characters working under strict orders in Peregrinations – a word that refers to people going from one place to another, in this case as displaced people.
The visual stories are inventively staged – again with the four large white boards denoting a counter or a roof or windows and much more. It’s a creative style of physical storytelling and allows the audience room to translate and transfer the imagery to imagining and understanding each new situation. Each story incorporates a certain amount of bureaucracy and emotion. Sometimes the emotion is quite raw depending on a person’s life situation. These immigrants all have a real story to tell and this company have taken interviews from the international cast members and others about their experiences having to leave their own countries and arrive in a foreign country – and getting used to austere rules.
A life size puppet of a very young child is a poignant part of the story, which is at times heart warming and heart wrenching. The puppet is beautifully crafted with real looking limbs and features, that are skillfully manipulated. This is an exceptional use of a puppet character to bring such warm emotion and tenderness into these troubled stories.
The creative abstract use of the white boards is a very effective continuous theme, together with the witty use of masks and some inventive unexpected mask moments, plus the well timed physical non verbal visual storytelling all make for an entertaining show of stories told with depth and meaning.
