For many of the shows, exhibitions and performances created for our 2019 Festival, Manchester is just the beginning of the story. After their world premieres in Manchester the productions, artists, cast and crew tour the world to venues and places whose support helps makes them happen. 

Many shows continue to tour years after their Festival debut such as MIF15’s Tree of Codes which just recently in July 2019 was presented in Paris, four years after its Manchester world premiere in which time it has seen successful presentations in Aarhus, London, Melbourne, New York, Hong Kong, Sydney and others.

MIF19 highlight Tao of Glass, written and performed by acclaimed theatre director Phelim McDermott and scored by the legendary composer Philip Glass, will feature at Perth Festival in February 2020. Tao of Glass will be the third MIF19 presentation in Australia alongside Invisible Cities at Brisbane Festival and The Nico Project at Melbourne Arts Festival, for which 11 students from Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music who performed in the show’s original Manchester inception, travelled with Maxine Peake to Melbourne.

MIF works closely on many new shows with venues, festivals and other cultural organisations around the world. The financial and creative input from these partners helps to make many projects possible and guarantees they have a life after the Festival – our co-commissioners and co-producers generally go on to stage these shows after their Manchester premieres, bringing them to an entirely new audience.

As part of the Theatre Olympics in St Petersburg Russia, Utopolis Petersburg, a specially redesigned Russian language version of Rimini Protocoll’s MIF19 Utopolis Manchester, opened in September whilst Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei Armah’s Tree was presented with our co-commissioning partners at the Young Vic in London.

 In October, Tuesday created by Belgian theatre company Studio Orka opened in Belgium, and Claire Cunningham’s 5 star critically acclaimed performance Thank You Very Much is now all set to start in Glasgow on Halloween at National Theatre Scotland following a run at Tanzhaus, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Premiering at MIF19, Maggie the Cat is the first part in Trajal Harrell’s new trio of dance works, Porca Miseria, focussed on the energy, history and likeness of three female icons—Medea (a sorceress from Greek mythology), Maggie (from Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Katherine Dunham (the legendary African-American dancer). Maggie the Cat has already begun to tour the world presenting in October in Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany which incidentally in September opened its autumn season with French dance innovator Boris Charmatz’s 10,000 gestures, which premiered in Manchester for MIF17. The trilogy’s three parts, O Medea which opened in Athens in March, Maggie the Cat and The Deathbed of Katherine Dunham (yet to debut), will be performed in isolation at venues across the world, before coming together for a full presentation – date and location yet to be announced.

Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang’s dreamlike VR experience, To the Moon, was internationally renowned before its UK premiere in MIF19 but has continued since the Festival to extend its international reach with further installations taking place in America and around the UK.

Returning to Reims premiered at Manchester International Festival in July 2017 as a Pre-Factory event and has since been translated into French, German and Italian. The show continues to tour France through the end of 2019 into early 2020. Akram Khan’s Giselle, the first full-length ballet choreographed by the dancer and choreographer will travel to Barcelona and Paris in 2020.

MIF also continues to collaborate with Björk on the production of her extraordinary multimedia exhibition, Björk Digital, which opened in São Paulo in June, after successful runs in Sydney, Tokyo, Barcelona, Mexico City, Moscow, Montreal, London and Los Angeles.

In 2020 MIF will continue to tour the world reaching new audiences in all corners of the globe. MIF’s legacy has been witnessed now in over 30 countries across 5 continents and continues grow with new international relationships forming and developing all the time as we head towards the opening of our new home The Factory, a world-class cultural space being developed in the heart of Manchester, ready to welcome the world to the city.