Kensington and Chelsea Festival Announce Full Theatre Programme

Kensington and Chelsea Festival announces the full theatre programme, celebrating creativity and culture for everyone this summer. Finborourgh Theatre, The Chelsea Theatre, The Cornonet, Shakespeare's Globe and The Playground Theatre top the eclectic bill which animates the borough's well-known and less-discovered spaces over the summer months. The Festival showcases exceptional emerging and established artists across more than 60 multi-disciplinary shows and events.

Finborourgh Theatre presents Pennyroyal, a heartrending new play about sisterhood and motherhood. The Finborough also presents UK Premieres of two Ukrainian plays Take The Rubbish Out, Sasha from the country's leading contemporary playwright Natal'ya Vorozhbit; and Pussycat in Memory of Darkness, an urgent piece of new writing from Neda Nezhdana that starkly reveals the roots of Russia's war on Ukraine through the brutalised eyes of one woman.

The Chelsea Theatre presents 18 Fringe Shows, selected through an Open Call involving local residents and professionals in the decision-making process and all at Pay What You Want prices to encourage those from the community who are new to the theatre to attend. Many of this year's shows have strong interactive elements from the audio show Macondo by Silvia Mercuriali to the theatrical culinary experience Slow Cooked Stories by Strange Futures and verbatim theatre performance The Thatcher Rite by Jack Boal.

Shakespeare's Globe presents the playwright's epic tragedy Julius Caesar which takes on startlingly new relevance as we confront our own political landscape. Director Diane Page brings Shakespeare's brutal Roman tale of ambition, incursion, and revolution to life in Cremorne Gardens. Tickets will be pre-released to Kensington and Chelsea social housing tenants.

In a new Festival commission, therapeutic drama and advocacy company The Trojan Women Project has led community drama workshops in both North Kensington and Chelsea to weave personal stories of exile and loss into a new adaptation of Euripides' great anti-war tragedy The Trojan Women, with a cast of refugees, some host community members and a core cast of professional actors who will perform at The Playground Theatre.

The Coronet Theatre presents Tiger is Coming, a celebration of contemporary Korean art, performance and culture from inflatable art to K-pop.

OUTDOOR ARTS PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE

A number of outdoor arts shows in the pop-up programme explore climate change and our relationship with the natural world, including WILD presented in Jubilee Square by Motionhouse, combining dynamic dance and acrobatic movement. In Kensington Memorial Park Timeless by performance company Joli Vyann presents a physical narrative of climate change and its consequences, fusing circus, theatre and dance. In the same location, physical theatre company Theatre Témoin presents FLOOD, a new, interactive outdoor spectacle, highlighting the health of the world's ocean through the eyes of Britain's coastal communities. One of the UK's original and most inventive outdoor arts companies, Desperate Men presents Generations, a show that explores how the young and the old might co-exist in the future via issues around identity politics, climate crises, social media as well as what unites and divides us.

Also in the outdoor arts programme, Jeanefer Jean-Charles presents Black Victorians in Jubilee Square, a dance performance inspired by nineteenth century studio photographs of black men, women and children. Exploring a complex, but often forgotten black presence in pre-Windrush Britain, this performance calls attention to previously "hidden figures" and challenges historical and contemporary perceptions.

Aerial theatre company Ockham's Razor & National Centre for Circus Arts present PUBLIC at World's End Place, a show about support, freedom and tenderness which asks how and where we can be uninhibited and unbound. 2 Faced Dance presents Where All Paths Lead at Emslie Horniman's Pleasance, in which seven male dancers embrace the powerful possibilities of different journeys. Internationally renowned Bharata Natyam dancer, Vidya Thirunarayan is also a prominent ceramicist, and combines these skills in Lives of Clay, a vivid and vital theatre experience telling stories of women from ancient myth and modern life outside The Chelsea Theatre.

Much of the programme has been curated with families and younger children in mind, from SEED by ambitious outdoor theatre company Pif-Paf, a highly visual hitch-hike on the journey from small Acorns to great Oak Trees; to family circus workshops with leading contemporary circus company Upswing and the entire pop-up arts programme in the borough's public spaces. The Place presents the album: skool edition By SAY celebrating the joy and innocence of making up dances to exciting new music in this interactive, outdoor dance show created specifically for kids and their families.

Opera Holland Park presents the UK Premiere of Mark Adamo's tender 1998 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's coming-of-age novel Little Women, focusing on the love between the four March sisters. Sian Edwards conducts, with Ella Marchment making her company debut as director. Opera Holland Park and Carnival Village Trust bring together two of West London's most well-loved musical institutions for Carnival Culture in the Park, three nights of calypso, Steelpan and Caribbean jazz during Notting Hill Carnival.

UK artist Luke Jerram will transform three spaces across the borough with Gaia. Measuring seven metres in diameter, Gaia features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Earth's surface. The artwork provides the opportunity to see our planet on this scale, floating in three dimensions.

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