Celebrating 10 years of cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary performance, Voila! Europe has announced its border-busting programme for 2022. A multilingual theatre festival produced by The Cockpit in Marylebone, the curated programme opens a trusted portal to new European theatre for independent artists and adventurous audiences. The festival is live on stage in London and live online everywhere, gathering together a welcoming community of the culturally curious.
Beginning in 2012 with a dozen bilingual shows in French and English at The Cockpit, Voila! Europe festival has adapted and morphed along with the times – opening its arms to all European languages in 2017 in response to the Brexit referendum. In 2020, Voila! presented an entirely digital festival, adapting to the pandemic by accelerating a long-term goal to reach international audiences online. For these efforts, the festival was awarded a “Badge of Invention” by the European Festivals Association. This year, the festival continues with digital shows – including one performed live from Ukraine – online watch parties, and on-stage performances, so that anyone can travel the world, from the comfort of their sofa or from their seat at The Cockpit.
Independent theatre reflects the emergent and urgent questions of our times. Throughout the programme, you’ll find theatre makers exploring every corner of the human condition, with shows about joy, violence, beauty, space, sex work, wonder, masculinity, old age, family, and cultural identity. As always, the festival showcases the wide variety of styles and techniques that make up “European Theatre:” poetry, puppetry, documentary, autobiography, technology, stunning imagery, innovative movement, clowning, masks, and many inventive uses of music, from folk gig-theatre to improvised vocal looping.
The twelve languages on stage at Voila! Europe this year – Ukrainian, Hungarian, French, Portuguese, Swedish, Russian, Spanish, German, Polish, Irish, Croatian, and English – promise to bring new perspectives and ideas to share with audiences in London, and online everywhere. Voila! Europe is described as a multilingual festival rather than an international one: languages can leap over borders and cross cultures to challenge preconceptions. If you don’t speak all twelve languages, don’t worry; there will be English subtitles when you need them.
Director of The Cockpit Dave Wybrow comments, Times are changing: our future depends upon a renewed commitment to values and the ability to make unlikely new connections in support of them. The cross-border challenges we face require deepening cooperation, not retreating behind walls. Which is why The Cockpit continues to produce Voila! Europe. Not because it brings together a glossy selection of designer theatre for an elite market, but because it brings together people who have something to say and are driven to say it before a live, engaged audience. Not because they all speak the same cultural language and take a good reception for granted, but specifically because they don’t.
Festival director Amy Clare Tasker says, London is full of independent artists and companies making theatre with European languages, accents, backgrounds, techniques, and aesthetics – but many find it difficult to find their place in the mainstream theatre landscape here. Voila! Europe is a platform to celebrate these artists and their work, and bring them together with companies working in continental Europe. This year, we are delighted to have three companies making the trip to London to present their shows at the festival from Hungary and France. Since the referendum in 2016, we have renewed our commitment to ‘keep the channel open’ between the UK and the rest of Europe, and to inspire London with the joyously inventive work of European artists.
The festival kicks off with four online shows. A one-off performance streamed live online from Ukraine, I-DO Lab’s A Visit to the Minotaur (Thursday 3rd November, 7pm) is an up-to-the-minute documentary look at the labyrinth of war. What is war, if not a Minotaur, to whom sacrifices of young men and girls are offered? The country is a present-day labyrinth – the front line evokes the maze of trenches and walls where the monster lives.
Ukraine. In Ukrainian with English subtitles.
In live online watch parties, audiences are encouraged to enjoy the shows at the same time as others watching from all over the globe. To create a real-time collaborative experience, the watch parties will incorporate live chats, and the artists behind each piece will be present to discuss their work in Q&A sessions following the shows.
The first online watch party is This Is Why We Live (Friday 4th November, 7pm, and on demand) from Open Heart Surgery Theatre. Combining physical theatre, original live music as well as clowning; two actors and a cellist bring to life the ironic and astonishing poetry of Nobel Prize-winning poet, Wisława Szymborska. The play awakens us to a poetic state of wonder and the complexity of human existence with a tango, an ode to onions, and conversations with stones.
Canada | France | Poland. In English, French and Polish with English subtitles.
Enos (Saturday 5th November, 4pm, and on-demand) is a show about life, the universe…and paper rockets. Amid shooting stars and the radio static, Enos the chimpanzee looks back at Earth, the only place in the universe we can call home. Multimedia storyteller Donald Craigie constructs this premiere from movement, memories and pieces of cardboard.
- In English.
Inspired by the 2006 Emsdetten school shooting in Germany, On the 20th of November (A 20 de Novembro) (Sunday 6th November, 4pm, and on-demand) is an unsettling monologue marking Teatro Gíria’s UK debut. 18-year-old Sebastian Bosse is about to carry out a massacre in the school where he studied. Speaking to the camera in his bedroom and to a captive theatre audience, he justifies what he is about to do, while revealing his most intimate wounds.
Portugal. In Portuguese and English with English subtitles.
The onstage shows this year begin with Miniatura (Monday 7th November, 7pm), a brand-new scratch night from Voila! Europe and The Cockpit which sets the stage for independent European theatre makers to test out their latest works in progress. With tickets priced at only £1, audiences can be the first to see these new performances, new translations, new ideas, and give feedback in an informal Q&A with the artists.
In English with other languages.
Son. theatre responds to the pandemic with Let Go Home (Tuesday 8th – Wednesday 9th November, 7pm), a meditation on grief told with an innovative live soundscape.
Mother’s dead, but she can make us veggie burgers on a Tuesday. This is the bizarre story of a bereaved family, told through stunning images, absurd physical play, live percussion, piano and vocals. Domestic daydreams and mares explore a father and son’s relationship to grief, to the home, and the hoarded belongings trapping a spirit in purgatory.
Sweden | Russia | Scotland | Greece | UK. In English with French, Swedish and Russian.
In a double bill with Let Go Home, Webcamming Chronicles (Tuesday 8th November, 8.45pm & Sunday 13th November, 7pm) is presented by madma prod & Lacra – Laboration de creación en artes. What goes on behind the scenes of the adult webcamming industry? This is your chance to step into the labyrinth. It’s a little like falling down the rabbit hole of desire and consent, where gonzo journalism and interviews meet performance, video art, and theatre.
France | Colombia. In English, with subtitled Spanish.
From Hunhu Productions, OffFest nominated Transit (Wednesday 9th November, 8.45pm) returns after a successful debut at Voila! Europe 2021. Giving a sensorial journey told through live music, dance, and poetry, it is inspired by the biomythic tales of the creative team. What can we carry with us across borderlines? From Budapest to Harare heat, Zuva and Dora have made it to the bustling London city streets, but will they stay? As the hostility towards migrants and refugees grows in the wake of Brexit, they navigate the ever-changing landscape of immigration and housing and queerness in the UK.
Hungary | UK | Zimbabwe. In English with Shona and Hungarian.
The most despicable things that Jaka Škapin has ever experienced all trace back to the patriarchy. As a man, what is he going to do about it? E – man – A (Thursday 10th November, 7pm) is a solo premiere performance exploring what place the body, language, and improvised song have in the ritual of challenging patriarchal masculinity from within.
UK | Slovenia. In English
Staging Change x VAULT award winner Bradán brings a gig-theatre call to arms with My Lover was a Salmon in the Climate Apocalypse (Thursday 10th November, 8.45pm & Friday 11th November, 9pm). Humanity ruins everything, but humanity’s just a dodgy side-branch of fish evolution. With live trad-influenced music, Bradán investigate global food production, ecological destruction, and our own place in this overwhelming timeline.
UK | Ireland. In English with some Irish (Gaeilge).
Tackling the climate emergency with surreal humour, Budapest’s Chance of the Hunter theatre company makes their international debut with apocalyptic dark comedy 999 (Friday 11th – Saturday 12th November, 7pm), with the support of the Listz Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre. Donald Tenborogh has decided to give up nature documentaries and join a hibernation programme to wake up in a better future. In his dreams, he meets his fears and desires: a polar bear dancing in a nightclub, an advertisement for the latest Galvanised Cylinder Bunker, and an unborn child who wants to live.
Hungary. In Hungarian with English surtitles.
Pourquoi les vieux, qui n’ont rien à faire, traversent-ils au feu rouge? (Why Do Old People, Who Have Nothing to Do, Cross at a Red Light?) (Saturday 12th November, 4pm & Sunday 13th November, 2.30pm) portrays just another day in the retirement home: a death, a new arrival, card games and a 100th birthday. But there’s one resident who doesn’t want to play anymore… Exploring the tragic with humour and delicacy, In Itinere Collectif uses masks to question taboos around old age, intimacy, and the sanctity of life.
France | UK | Sweden | Colombia | Turkey | Korea | Belgium. In French, English, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
Expect touching, visual theatre with a disarming deadpan humour in Natasha Stanic Mann’s The Return (Sunday 13th November, 5.15pm). This devised one-woman show explores the hidden consequences of war. Combining movement, storytelling, and poetry, this profoundly personal story investigates how living through war has affected where Natasha is now.
Croatia | UK. In English with Croatian.
An essential festival, platforming emerging artists and theatre that might be considered too political or uncomfortable for bigger venues. – The Stage
Voila! Europe clearly has an imaginative and energetic approach to presenting international work in an urban festival setting. From its initial aims it has proved itself to be responsive, quirky, and risk-taking. – European Festivals Association
Voila! Europe is supported by United Colleges Group, the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre London, the Institut français du Royaume-Uni, and EUNIC (EU National Institutes for Culture). Voila! Europe is part of the European Festivals Association label. Some productions in the 2022 festival are supported by Arts Council England.
