Following the enormous success of last year’s festival, VAULT returns to Waterloo’s Leake Street tunnels from 28 January-8 March. Specifically, dance and physical theatre are one of VAULT’s areas of excellence this year with a wide programme of powerful and provocative shows taking over the venue.
Six weeks of live entertainment will see Heritage Arts present a carefully curated, high quality multi-arts programme across seven different spaces under Waterloo station. This year’s highlights include the London premieres of radical theatre company Filter’s Macbeth as well as True Brits, a brand new play from Rich Mason Productions and HighTide Festival Theatre. They are joined by multidisciplinary and interactive Artful Badger’s first ever narrative production and the comedian and performance artist Yve Blake.
With more than 30,000 tickets available, 500 individual events and over 80 artistic groups, the line-up comprises some of the most exciting emerging artists and companies in a programme of music, performance, dance, comedy, discussions, debates and one-off late night events, all taking place in a secret maze of underground tunnels behind a single door.
Acts this year include masculine-feminist pop sensation Dani Frankenstien, Superbolt Theatre’s epic man versus monster adventure Jurassic Park, one-man-shows from the likes of Move To Stand, Rolemop Arts, Matthew Bellwood, Jessica Burgess, Tristran Bernays, cabaret from taxidermist Charlie Tuesday Gates and her gang, ensemble theatre from Dumbshow, d’Animate, Edinburgh sensations House of Blakewell and many many more.
The Festival Director has ensured the event has a pulse of many voices – there are 500 individual events happening at VAULT, chosen by mixture of invitation, public submission and charitable competition, so each day has a unique heartbeat. The programming philosophy looks for passion and ability and VAULT’s learned that artistic groups grow in knowledge by observation and practice. It is now the longest, biggest, broadest, most central performing arts festival in London, all behind one magical door in Waterloo.