Cross discipline London International Festival of Theatre, LIFT, takes place in venues across London including Battersea Arts Centre, Deptford's The Albany and The Tower of London.
This year's Festival has as guest director David Binder, recently announced as artistic director of Brooklyn Academy of Music; he has curated an event that celebrates community and puts the spotlight on those at risk of marginalisation.
Binder's programming includes ten commissions, five world premières and eight UK premières; amongst these are:
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Obie-Award-winning Notes From the Field from American playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith in her first London appearance in over 25 years (Royal Court Theatre)
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In Search of Dinozord, a poetic, political fairy tale scored with fragments of Mozart’s requiem and guitar riffs from Jimi Hendrix from Faustin Linyekula from the Democratic Republic of Congo (The Place)
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In Phobiarama from Dutch theatre maker and visual artist Dries Verhoeven, the audience sit in fairground cars to experience this immersive excursion into our contemporary culture of fear (King’s Cross, West Handyside Canopy)
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Lady Eats Apple is a large-scale, experiential production featuring ingenious binaural sound and epic visuals looking at the fragility of existence and challenging the assumptions we hold about others and ourselves; it comes from Australia's Back to Back Theatre, a company driven by an ensemble of actors with perceived intellectual disabilities who are co-authors and performers of the work
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The world première of Punchdrunk's Small Wonders, pioneers of a form of theatre where audiences of families and children aged 5 to 11 years explore sensory worlds (Bernie Grant Arts Centre)
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South Korea's National Changgeuk Company of Korea makes its first performance in the UK with contemporary opera Trojan Women; the work is composed by K-pop scene producer Jung Jae-il in collaboration with Pansori master Ahn Sook-sun, bringing together ancient and modern art forms (Queen Elizabeth Hall Southbank Centre)
The programme also includes Nightwalks with Teenagers which has been created by UpLIFTers, a group of teenagers from Tottenham who have been working with LIFT since 2015, with German counterparts, Mit Ohne Alles and Canadian counterparts, The Young Mammals.