BY HEART and RADIO LIVE: A NEW GENERATION Come to Battersea Arts Centre

Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) will bring two remarkable, perspective-altering UK premieres, which challenge the boundaries of theatre, to the stage this October as part of its 2025-6 season. From the power of poetry as a mirror of life in By Heart to the raw immediacy of young voices from conflict zones in Radio Live: A New Generation, these two unforgettable plays celebrate collective creation and uplift international stories.

Blending spoken word, video and live music, Radio Live: A New Generation sits at the unique intersection between radio, documentary and theatre. Created by French radio journalist Aurelie Charon with theatre maker Amélie Bonnin, the premise is seemingly simple: each performance, Aurelie invites two different young people to the stage and hands them a microphone. They are Karam Al Kafri from Syria, Yannick Kamanzi from Rwanda, Oksana Leuta from Ukraine and Amir Hassan from Gaza. The production reinvents itself with each performance through drawing, video and music as the subjects share their perspectives on the impacts of war – familial, social, activistic and artistic. It is a powerful reflection on friendship as a collective force and an invitation for humans to unite to help keep hatred at bay.

Yannick Kamanzi says, “Radio Live is such an alive experience — every time we step on stage and enter into dialogue, it expands. For us, it feels almost unbelievable to see our personal lives and silent questions resonate with wide audiences and call them to action. 

“Bringing this work to the UK for the very first time is thrilling, because a new country means new stories to unlock, new ways to relate. It’s a risk for both sides — but with that risk comes the hope of building a bridge, where our stories help audiences fall in love with their own stories, and where dialogue becomes an invitation to sit across the table with strangers. At a time of wars, genocides, and growing walls of hate, I believe the world needs more bridges and tables. My hope is that UK audiences embrace this work and leave with a renewed desire to live purposefully and fight for life.”

For the past ten years, acclaimed Portuguese theatre-maker and director of Festival d’Avignon Tiago Rodrigues has presented By Heart – a heartrending show that is the result of a request from his grandmother as she was going blind. Created and performed by Rodrigues, he invites ten audience members to memorise a poem on stage, weaving their learning process with stories of his grandmother’s fading sight and her experience of a life when books were banned. Combining a Shakespeare sonnet with the writings of George Steiner, Boris Pasternak and Ray Bradbury, and also making its long awaited UK premiere, By Heart is a true manifesto for the power of poetry as both an act of resistance and remembrance.

Tiago Rodrigues says, “By Heart has always been an incredibly important production for me in my career, due to it being my most personal performance to date. Through the story of my grandmother, By Heart touches on universal themes of resistance; resistance against territories, resistance against biology, that I believe will resonate with UK audiences.