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 create fearlessly re-imagined 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.

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 the mythological, the historical, and the modern experience.

Our mission was to create a responsive and fearless international laboratory theatre company in the North West of England. We lived, trained and performed in Manchester so chose the city as the place to grow the work of Animikii. We experimented with imaginative improvisation, weaved new & existing writing, devised with the inclusion of personal memory to create theatre that is intense, immediate and fearless.

It was at this point we wrote our Manifesto, which you can read below. We hope to continue to bring exciting theatre to the UK and beyond for many more years to come.