VAULT Launch First Comedy Festival And Groundbreaking New Immersive Venue

VAULT Festival announces the first annual VAULT Comedy Festival, a dedicated programme of over 125 comedy shows across 8 weeks, curated to showcase work from hotly tipped comics through to Edinburgh Comedy Award Winners, stand up heavyweights and TV panel show stars. Live performance pioneers, VAULT additionally unveils a trailblazing pop up immersive and VR performance space, Unit 9, featuring a dystopian themed interactive strategy experience and lifeboat escape room. With support from WeAreWaterloo, the full programme scales new writing, dance, cabaret, film and much more. VAULT Festival returns from 24th January to 18th March 2018. Full programme and tickets available now via vaultfestival.com.

VAULT Comedy Festival

Appearances at the inaugural VAULT Comedy Festival come from the likes of Joe Lycett, Bridget Christie, Richard Gadd, Phil Wang and James Acaster, alongside critically-acclaimed Edinburgh shows from Mat Ewins and Graham Dickson as well as Steen Raskopoulos's The Bear Pack, Joe Sutherland with Model/Actress and The Pretend Men, who return to VAULT with their highly physical Police Cops in Space for a two week run from Jan 24th. Adam Riches beds in for a week of one-off shows including the 2011 Edinburgh Comedy Award Winning Bring Me The Head of Adam Riches and a performance of his first ever show from the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe Festival Plat du Nuit. A whole programme of Work in Progress shows from comics such as Mae Martin, Rhys James, Fin Taylor and Sheeps return for their first shows since 2014.

Joe Lycett: Lols in Progress (1-4 Feb, 2018)

For the first time, VAULT Festival has partnered with Lower Marsh's independent bookshop, performance and cafe fusion space, Travelling Through to programme eight weeks of intimate comedy shows. Liam Williams takes on a fortnightly residency hosting new material night Over The Volcano, serenading the audience with tales of inter-railing through Europe in post-Brexit 2017, while introducing some of the newest acts on the circuit. UK-based Japanese comedian and winner of BBC New Comedy Award 2015 Yuriko Kotani brings a show packed with bizarre observations and hilarious storytelling with Overwork In Progress. Further highlights include new shows from Emma Sidi, Luke McQueen, Tom Houghton and Mawaan Rizwan and 2 nights of developmental madness from Edinburgh Comedy Award Nominee Jordan Brookes. With scores of additional acts presenting both critically acclaimed and brand new material across the festival, VAULT Festival is the must attend 2018 event for rising stars and big talent in British comedy.

Immersive and Site Specific Shows

Pop up experiential venue, Unit 9, will span the full eight weeks of the festival and host a series of immersive, escape room and virtual reality shows. Revolution, an immersive strategy experience by Exit Productions, brings together gaming and interactive theatre by casting the audience as the protagonists of change in a dystopian city in revolutionary turmoil. Three distinct audience factions are pitted against each other to take over a digital map of London (24th Jan - 18th March). Tickets are additionally on sale now for The Lifeboat, an eighties sci-fi inspired escape room experience, in which audiences of eight must scavenge clues to escape the ramshackle hold of a prison ship, also running for eight weeks.

(The Lifeboat, 24 Jan - 18 March 2018)

A series of on the move shows include, Rubber, an hour-long immersive show promising to thrill as audiences ride out the action set in a car circumnavigating the streets of Waterloo, as well as Soul-in-a-Van which will take audiences on a music filled journey in a van decked out with its own piano and cinema seats. Wrecked from Fever Dream Theatre is set inside a crashed car just moments after a devastating accident. Meanwhile, Robin Linde productions return to VAULT for a third year with The Caravan Theatre bringing a selection of evocative new short plays to intimate audiences of up to nine in a caravan parked on Leake Street.

Running the entirety of the festival, Becoming Shades serves up a sensory feast of dance, aerial acrobatics, music and fire performances as Chivaree Circus explode their 2017 award winning re-imagining of the classic myth of Persephone into a full 8 week immersive circus extravaganza. Neverland, by Theatre Deli and The Guild of Misrule, producers of the 2017 immersive theatre sensation, The Great Gatsby, also returns to VAULT 2018 with a full eight week run of this immersive musical adaptation of J.M. Barrie's classic.

At weekends, the immersive entertainment will continue into the small hours with the return of the LATES programme, featuring a series of late night parties every Friday and Saturday. Highlights include LABYRINTH (2nd and 3rd March) an immersive theatrical circus party from Chivaree Circus, as well as a debaucherous anti-Valentine's party with The Bleeding Heart Ball (17th Feb) from Shotgun Carousel and Gypsy Disco. VAULT Lates also welcomes the return of international showgirl Tempest Rose with The House of Burlesque Lock In (9th and 10th Feb) and FAT Tuesday (23rd and 24th Feb) London's answer to global Mardi Gras, which invites revellers to get wild with giant brass sections, circus acts, impromptu parades and much more.

With an ever increasing number of shows, experiences and events scheduled and support from WeAreWaterloo, VAULT will for the first time partner with Waterloo East Theatre to programme a wide variety of shows including Bicycles and Fish, a storytelling show from VAULT Origins Award 2016 winner Katy Arnstein, as well as La Revue en Rose, The Vagina Dialogues and Trump the Musical with further programming at the Network Theatre, Unit 9, Travelling Through and Granby Place.

Exec Producer and Artistic Director of Waterloo East Theatre, Gerald Armin comments: "Waterloo East Theatre is thrilled and excited to be a host venue for 'London's biggest arts festival' and is looking forward to the challenge of presenting an eclectic mix of productions, extending its well established support for new and innovative work."

Packed with an array of intimate themed bars and a selection of the city's finest street food offerings, VAULT festival is an eight week cultural nerve centre inviting audiences to snap up hot tickets to multiple and varied shows as well as playing host to a series of glittering late night parties.

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