VAULT Festival 2015 Kicks Off Today

Following the enormous success of last year's VAULT Festival, Heritage Arts welcomes VAULT's triumphant return to the Leake Street tunnels for six frenetic weeks of live entertainment. From today, 28 January 2015 they will present a carefully curated, high quality multi-arts programme across seven different spaces under Waterloo station.

A fixture in the arts calendar, this year's highlights include the London premieres of radical theatre company Filter's Macbeth as well as True Brits a brand new play from Rich Mason Productions and HighTide Festival Theatre. They are joined by magical multidisciplinary and interactive artists Artful Badger's first ever narrative production, comedy monster Red Bastard's longest ever run and the multifarious comedian and performance artist Yve Blake. VAULT will once again bring a programme of free live music every Wednesday and Sunday, this year curated by Mercury Prize nominee and contemporary folksong pioneer Sam Lee's The Nest Collective, bringing beautiful acoustic breakthrough acts, showcasing exciting new artists, enticing foreign musicians and a smattering of old favourites, all of the highest musical order.

With more than 30,000 tickets available, 500 individual events and over 80 artistic groups, the line-up comprises some of the most exciting emerging artists and companies in a programme of music, performance, dance, comedy, discussions, debates and one-off late night events, all taking place in a secret maze of underground tunnels behind a single door.

VAULT houses productions large and small, established and experimental, and everything in between. Acts this year include dangerous comedy monster Red Bastard, masculine feminist pop sensation Dani Frankenstien, Superbolt Theatre's epic man versus monster adventure Jurassic Park, one-man-shows from the likes of Move To Stand, Rolemop Arts, Matthew Bellwood, Jessica Burgess, Tristran Bernays, cabaret from taxidermist Charlie Tuesday Gates and her roadkill gang, The Broken Dream, ensemble theatre from Dumbshow, d'Animate, Crawley & Co, Scaffold State, Edinburgh sensations House of Blakewell and many many more. Favourites from 2014, The Kansas Smitty's House Band return to entertain visitors in the bar and the VAULT Lates also make a comeback - debauched one-off extravaganzas that take over the caverns of VAULT well into the early hours, curated by some of the nation's best party people.

Alongside ticketed performances, anyone can join VAULT underground at the Festival Bar, open to the public every night for drinks, dancing, discovery and perhaps a little more. This year VAULT have teamed up with surrealist immersive event company Lemonade and Laughing Gas, specialists in playful installation art.

VAULT 2015 will build on the success of the 2014 Festival which saw over £100,000 go into the coffers of the participating artists, a result of the Heritage Arts Company's efforts to help emerging companies control how their work is brought to an audience or a market. The second incarnation of VAULT in 2014 more than doubled the size and impact of the 12-day inaugural festival in 2012. Over 20, 000 tickets were sold last year, with guests able to choose from 60 different events across the six weeks; up to 20 events were on offer each night across the seven chambers of The Vaults.

VAULT Festival Director Tim Wilson said 'We programme for Lambeth, for London, for the UK and for everyone. We make sure the festival has a pulse of many voices - there are 500 individual events happening at VAULT, chosen by mixture of invitation, public submission and charitable competition, so each day has a unique heartbeat. Our programming philosophy looks for passion and ability. VAULT's learned that artistic groups grow in knowledge by observation and practice. It is now the longest, biggest, broadest-programme, most central performing arts Festival in London, all behind one magical door in Waterloo. It is a madness of superlatives. And you can drop by anytime and discover us, and surprise yourself, for free.'

Full programme listing available at www.vaultfestival.com. Follow the festival on Twitter @vaultfestival #vault2015.

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VAULT Festival 2015 Lineup:

The Artful Badger presents
WILD WORLDS: DARK SIDE

After last year's sell-out show The Artful Badger returns to VAULT festival for an extended three week run, with a brand new episode of Wild Worlds. Dark Side serves up acts exploring the animal instinct of the human condition; it's a curated collection of breath-taking breakages, emotional explosives, anti-gravity time travellers, buffooning birds, bad habits & allegorical aerial. One way or another they will touch you, open you up and take you to their world.

This year Artful Badger have expanded their program to include workshops, Sunday scratch shows and tremendous talks for VAULT goers to get involved with. Plus, in true Badger fashion, they go out with a bang, their residency of the caverns under Waterloo Station culminates with the epic Love & Lightening Valentines Ball, a smash hit at VAULT 2014.

Filter Theatre and the Tobacco Factory Theatres present
MACBETH
by William Shakespeare
Created by Filter
Music Composed by Tom Haines

Following the international success of previous Shakespeare adaptations, Filter Theatre presents the London premiere of their new adaptation of Macbeth at VAULT 2015 from 4 - 15 February 2015. Playful, kaleidoscopic and horrific, Filter's radical version of Macbeth fuses Shakespeare's corrosive, psychological thriller of ambition, power, witchcraft and sanity with innovative sound and music to take you on a strange, funny and scintillating journey to the epicentre of the "heat-oppressed brain".

Three weird sisters demarcate an area on stage. They operate a strange collection of electronic musical apparatus. Macbeth is invited in to play.

Founded in 2001, Filter are actors Oliver Dimsdale, Ferdy Roberts and musician Tim Phillips, working with a trademark fusion of performance with integrated live music and sound. Filter work with a collective of musicians, technicians, designers, writers and directors in a strong group dynamic aiming to create a devising language - an artistic short hand - that is truly creative.

Rich Mason Productions and HighTide Festival Theatre present
TRUE BRITS
by Vinay Patel
Directed by Tanith Lindon

After critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, True Brits comes to London to headline VAULT Festival 2015 after two sold out preview performances at the Bush's Radar festival. The debut play from outstanding young British Asian playwright Vinay Patel, True Brits sweeps between the paranoid London of 2005 and the euphoric city of the 2012 Olympics, an honest, humorous, hopeful tale about wanting to love and be loved.

When a violent encounter leads to a whirlwind romance, Rahul is more than willing to be swept into it. But in the aftermath of 7/7, his world changes in ways he cannot control, drawing him into ever-darker places as he struggles to remain part of a British society that now distrusts him simply for being a British Asian.

Ten years after London was hit by the 7/7 bombings, Patel brings a play about being British of Asian descent, but not about extremism, terrorism, or conflicting loyalties to London. True Brits deals with coming of age, falling in love, and finding a place in a society that distrusts you simply for the way you look. The result is a sincere and funny piece leaves audiences of all backgrounds uplifted.

Yve Blake & Co present
LIE COLLECTOR
by Yve Blake

Yve Blake returns to headline VAULT after her sold-out show Then premiered at VAULT in 2014, returning to London five subsequent times by popular demand. This year Yve Blake brings her glorious musical, costumed celebration of the confessions we have all been desperate to share, Lie Collector, inspired by over 1000 stories from strangers in 154 different cities sent in to her interactive website, WhoWereWe.com.

Yve Blake, maker of music, comedy, theatre, online experiences and a fool of herself makes all her work in collaboration with her audience. An award-winning and published playwright, Yve's Sugar Sugar, developed with the Royal Court Young Playwright's program, premiered in Melbourne in June 2014.

Sam Lee presents
THE NEST COLLECTIVE

BBC award winning Nest Collective host regular events across London under the banner New Folk Old Folk No Folk, inspired by British and world-wide artists alike. Free every Wednesday and Sunday throughout the six weeks The Nest Collective will bring beautiful acoustic breakthrough acts to VAULT, as well as showcasing exciting new musicians, enticing foreign artists and providing smattering of old favourites, all of the highest musical order. Alongside this they will they will host three late night Nest Collective musical extravaganzas, showcasing raucous ceilidh-based spectaculars, featuring The Ceilidh Liberation Front, and Fitty Gomash, the UK's newest and most radical ceilidh bands.

Set up by Mercury Prize nominated Folk singer Sam Lee in reaction to London's lack of places to see and hear folk music in a contemporary environment, the Nest Collective is a celebrated London-wide folk club bringing the brightest and most innovative folk music and programming to the city and to festival stages around the country. Deeply rooted in the musical traditions and folk heritage on which it's based, it's a hub where both established stalwarts of the tradition, youthful successes and new challengers to the throne of folk meet and make merry.

VAULT LATES:

At 10.30pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays throughout the festival, the atmospheric caverns of VAULT will become a nightclub, featuring one-off parties and extravaganzas. These include: a Valentine's Day Ball presented by Artful Badger; and London's best Fat Tuesday party brought to life by Kansas Smitty's and The Americana.

VAULT: THE EXPERIENCE:

Anyone can join VAULT underground at the Festival Bar to eat, drink, listen to free live music and even take an adventure into an unexpected theatrical experience. Open to non-show ticket holders every night, the VAULT bar is a bizarre and eclectic hub that sits at the middle of seven unique performance spaces. Serving up whatever the appetite desires, the door to the underground is always open at VAULT.

For the third edition of VAULT, the team underground have joined forces surrealist immersive event company Lemonade and Laughing Gas to add a bit of adventure to the eating and drinking experience. Amy Lord and Louise Orwin of Lemonade and Laughing Gas are known to the most curious of Londoners for working their magic in unusual spaces all over, from disused radio studios with through-the-night bread-making raves to decadent 70s immersive Rothschild family dining experiences in regency ballrooms. Teamed with the magical panoply that is VAULT we expect things to be a little different each night.

DETAILS:

VAULT 2015
The Vaults
Leake Street,
Waterloo, SE1 7NN
www.thevaultfestival.com

About VAULT - VAULT is a six week all-arts festival in central London, taking place 28 January - 8 March 2015. VAULT 2015 will build further on the 2012 and 2014 incarnations, providing a thrillingly diverse range of diversions in the Leake Street tunnels. About The Heritage Arts Company, Producers of VAULT 2015The Heritage Arts Company (Tim Wilson, Mat Burt & Andy George) creates cultural events that excite the public imagination. We create our own work and produce work by other artists. Using spectacle to inform, to teach and to entertain, we aim to unite people through shared storytelling. We are an arts company. This means we've committed to undertake all sorts of mediums and artforms. It depends on the message. Our guiding principles are equality and honesty. Above everything else.So far we've created or produced live music, radio plays, straight theatre, contemporary dance, gallery installations, set design and installation, multiplayer games, stand-up comedy, horticulture, educational experiences, amongst others. We've worked with, or created work for, the Battersea Arts Centre, The National Theatre, Punchdrunk, The Shunt Lounge, Secret Cinema, The British Fashion Council, Google, Atlas Obscura, King's Cultural Institute, Lumin, Camp Bestival, The Insider Festival, Harrods, Sky Atlantic, The Hospital Club, Lily Vanilli, Old Vic Tunnels, IdeasTap, Kindle Theatre, Hammer Horror, The Flicker Club, Ron Arad, The Roundhouse, English Heritage, & more.

About Lemonade and Laughing Gas - Founded by artists Amy Lord and Louise Orwin in 2011, Lemonade and Laughing Gas have worked their magic in unusual spaces all over London, from disused radio studios to regency ballrooms, and most recently in their repurposed and renovated caravan, Portable Joy. Their latest events have included Shooting Stars-inspired games nights, a through-the-night bread-making rave (with breakfast served in the morning), and a decadent 70s immersive dining experience that recreated and reimagined an actual dinner party held by the Rothschild family in 1972.