After 10 years at The Cockpit, Voila! Theatre Festival relaunches in November 2024 as an umbrella festival with performances taking place in nine venues across London.
Voila! is a place for artists to take risks, present a new piece of work, tour to a new audience, or translate a play into a new language.
At Voila! you’ll meet artists playing with big ideas, theatrical forms, and world languages in innovative and unexpected ways. It all begins on the 4th of November at The Cockpit with ‘Miniatura’ scratch and opening night.
The Miniatura scratch night presents four 10-minute work-in-progress performances, each one followed by a short Q&A with the artists and audience.
Come for the innovative panlingual theatre, and stay for a drink in the bar afterward to officially open Voila! Theatre Festival 2024.
Tickets for Voila! Theatre Festival 2024 can be purchased here at www.voilafestival.co.uk OR on the website of the venue where the events are taking place. If a show is sold out on the Voila website, please check with the venue, as tickets may still be available via their box office.
Voila! Theatre Festival is produced by The Cockpit and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Festival highlights include:
Copla: a Spanish Cabaret
Copla, practically unknown in England, is essential to Spain’s cultural and political history. Copla songs channel the queer and migrant experiences in Spain’s early musicals, hitting all the right notes for gay people who love to laugh and cry to divas and their melodramatic music. Copla once served as political tool against repression – first under Franco’s dictatorship, and later for Spanish LGBTQ communities. Queer migrant performer Alejandro Postigo de-constructs the traditional Spanish songs and shares their historical significance for queer collectives, inviting the audience to be part of the dialogue. Through his performance of English Copla and sharing his life stories, you’ll witness his rebirth as alter ego La Gitana, with live music, a drink in hand and lots of interaction.
How to Urn a Living – Beserk Theatre
A merry story of murders and morality. Berserk Theatre’s new play spooks and delights with physical comedy and witty dialogue. This funeral home farce subverts expectations of death, questioning how class, religion, and traditions intersect with our own impermanence – and ultimately asks what are the consequences of capitalising on death.
How to Urn a Living
For generations, Fowler’s Funerals has undertaken the responsibility of lifting the spirits of grieving people. But lately business has been dying down, forcing Mr. Fowler, his shop girl Lilith, and his mortician Wisteria to think outside the (pine) box or risk going under. Fowler suggests new business cards; Lilith, new flowers; Wisteria… something more sinister.
Unilaterally deciding her strategy is best, Wisteria enacts her plan and makes Lilith an unwilling accomplice. As they scramble to keep their business alive and satisfy their customers’ bizarre requests, the lengths they will go to protect their (funeral) home are tested.
Join London’s transnational theatrical conversation.
