The Vaults Festival have announced details of its largest festival to date in 2019, taking place from the 23rd January until the 17th March. 

Now in its seventh year, the Vaults Festival will return to London in January with more than 400 shows celebrating new writing for theatre and comedy, immersive experiences, cabaret, live performance and late night parties.

This newly announced programme will feature shows from more than 2,000 artists, with 53% of work being female-led and 25% of work coming from LGBTQIA+ artists.

Throughout the festival, performances will take place across Waterloo with multiple spaces located underground in the festival’s central hub, The Vaults. Other festival venues include London’s secret community performance space The Network Theatre, upstairs at The Horse & Stables pub, Granby Place, and the Travelling Through Bookshop on Lower Marsh where audiences can catch new material from television favourites and  new comics. Unit 9 on Leake Street will be a space dedicated to ground-breaking immersive performances while other pop-up venues include shipping containers, caravans and escape rooms.

Highlights of the theatre programme will include immersive folk opera Counting Sheep returning to the UK for the first time since its award-winning run at Edinburgh Fringe in 2016, the London premiere of Balaklava Blues – an ethno-bass live set, coupled with archive footage, iconic Soviet cartoons, and the polyphonic blues of the Ukrainian plains and Spun Glass Theatre’s Princess Charming.

Meanwhile, for those searching for comedy the festival will offer opportunities to catch household favourites like James Acaster, Phil Wang and Desiree Burch and debuts from the most exciting up and coming acts such as Helen Bauer, Chloe Petts and Kayla Macquarie.

It has also been announced that the Vaults Festival will support Help Refugees and Child.org. All ticket transactions for VAULT Festival will provide audiences with the opportunity to donate to Help Refugees, providing humanitarian aid to displaced people around the world. Child.org will host an exclusive stage at The Horse & Stables pub and receive a percentage of ticket sales to support their Team Mum campaign, helping to fund pregnancy services in rural Kenya that offer health information and medical support for new mothers.

Talking about the news the Vault Festival team said: ” VAULT Festival started as an idea to bring artists and audiences together in an unusual space, in exciting spaces, to see if we could make a new model for the creative industry. A few years later, our audience has stuck with us and grown beyond our wildest hopes. We want VAULT Festival to be the people’s festival, designed around the audience, the artists, and our staff, without unfairly disadvantaging any of them. They are the very core of what makes VAULT work, and what makes us special.”

For the full programme and to book tickets visit: https://vaultfestival.com/