One of the bonuses of being a blogger is the occasional freebie. For the more successful / perky / young dynamos of the modern day vlogging world this may be tickets to the VMAs or a sample from the new Topshop-designer collection. For those of us whose age, as like a tree, can be ascertained by counting the lines carved into our forehead, are already well prepared for hip, scarily precocious twenty-something marketing 
execs to at best acknowledge our existence with the occasional eye roll, dramatic sigh and mandatory thirty seconds of feigned interest.
Which is why it was a pleasurable surprise to wander down Leak Street (home to some of London’s best graffiti) and into the Vaults; home for the next two weeks to Mimetic Festival 2014. Invited to the launch party and plied (well at least offered) something fizzy in a glass is generally a good way of getting me onside. However they really pushed my buttons by offering a cabaret bar (impressively thrown up in just over 24 hours) that could have spirited out of an art deco museum (or at least out of Poirot’s apartment).
Mimetic Festival is “a celebration of the very best emerging devised, physical and visual theatre, puppetry and cabaret”. Like all the best festivals it is growing year on year, and this time it can claim to be offering up 120 shows from over 50 different countries. If slightly alternative theatre is your thing then Mimetic Festival is somewhere you ought to be over the next two weeks.
Showcased for our entertainment were snippets from the fortnight, and it really did demonstrate the range of acts vying for our attention. From the knowing beautiful clowning of Marion Deprez to the intriguing Greatest Liar in all the World there is something for everyone (even those who think that only way to improve Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights video would be to recreate it using a highly sexualised puppet).
Civilian Theatre will be reviewing a number of Mimetic Festival productions over the next year and is one of a number of Mimetic Festival Awards Partners. We will be tweeting and posting to the blog throughout, and you can find all of the latest reviews at: https://civiliantheatre.com/mimetic-festival/
Mimetic Festival runs from 17 – 29 November 2014 at the Vaults, Leake Street, SE1 7NN.
For more information about Mimetic Festival: http://www.mimeticfest.com/
Civilian Theatre 
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