Generation V
Prepare yourself for the brazen and original work of the next generation of performance makers. The UK’s Leading creative drama schools, East 15 & Fourth Monkey, bring their best & boldest to VAULT Festival. Get ready for something different.
The VAULT Festival takeovers showcase ambitious new work from artists based outside of London and performance makers new to the industry. By working closely with leading cultural organisations around the UK, our takeovers support them to enter and thrive in the creative sector, contributing to a more sustainable, accessible, and representative industry for all.
The Fall
RUCKLE Theatre in association with Fourth Monkey
8th – 9th March
What the f@#! happens when your work environment becomes toxic? Step into our office. A dark, filing cabinet filled labyrinth nestled inside our protagonist’s brain. Someone’s crying, someone’s laughing and you’ve completely forgotten the answer to ‘What do I want to be when I grow up?’
When did work become a fight for survival? Inspired by neuroscience and experiences of occupational burnout, THE FALL is an invitation to step into our brain’s maze. Will you be able to find your way out?
More than a tale about burnout, THE FALL explores how we can heal from it and how, with your help, we can change the narrative to prevent it. With a cast of international performers and the support of Oxfordshire Mind, this is RUCKLE Theatre’s debut show.
Ruben
East 15 Acting and Contemporary Theatre
8th + 12th March
A mob boss, a detective, an idiot, and his puppet walk into a bar. That’s gotta hurt! In a world where it’s possible to be criminally unfunny, Frankie and his puppet pal Ruben are guilty as charged. Our boys are hot under the collar, not just ‘cause of the gun pointed at their heads but also the femme fatale with her finger on the trigger. For our comedy duo opportunity comes knock-knocking, but who’s there? An invitation. An invitation who? An invitation for you!
So come watch their act go from hilariously stupid to stupidly hilarious overnight. This film-noir farce will have you asking: Is every line a bad pun? How is the puppet alive? Is it meant to be a musical? When was the last time I told my family I loved them? And meant it? All these questions and more will go unanswered! No refunds, ya shmuck.
Post Sex Spag Bol
The CT Course East 15
9th + 13th March
After being handed a job as counsellor and sex-ed teacher, Krissy deliberately leads a classroom full of goggle-eyed-girls down a motorway of mistakes. At a religious all-girls boarding school, fuelled by her own flaws, she shaves away any expectation of a perfect role model. With a desire for destruction, she purposely feeds bad advice to the hormone-riddled girls, from questionable kinks, to the swimming pools secret-sex-shack.
Told by a three women ensemble, this comic story of sex, love, and spagbol explores self-love, womanhood and growing up … as well as, vibrators, funerals, the twelve disciples, piss play and that mint shower gel. BYOB – Bring your own Bolognese.
Home
Co-produced by Azza-har Theatre & Fourth Monkey
10th – 11th March
An astronaut collects floating rubbish in space and uncovers forgotten memories along the way.
Azza-har Theatre’s debut show, Home, is an atmospheric insight into the meaning of home in the context of environmental crises. What is the interaction between the human and non-human elements
that compose our ideas of home? How does our understanding of home respond to the effects of a quickly changing natural environment and the threat of ecological collapse?
Through a combined use of physical storytelling, puppetry and captivating imagery, Home is a touching and peculiar story about belonging.
Mouthful of Fingers
East 15 CT
10th + 12th March
By the contaminated coast, amongst the dead poplars, lies the decaying Warbler estate. The remaining members of this once great clan await for Cousin Fandango’s arrival. Through the smog, a figure approaches, but it’s not him. Who is this stranger in the colorful velvet suit?
Histories forgotten and secrets buried come screaming out in this post-apocalyptic family drama where truth and reality have two entirely separate meanings.
Flowers in a Dark Room
East 15 Contemporary Theatre
11th + 13th March
‘I have racked my brain over what happened this night; what I did wrong, how I could change what was to come.’ You join us for Thanksgiving in St Louis, Missouri, 1930. Vermont has finally returned to his family home, but perhaps he has arrived too late. His sister, Iris, has a story to tell, but she can’t tell it alone.
In this musical drama, Tennessee Williams meets Dr Seuss in a spiral of unfolding tragedy, with secrets and unexpected visitors. The Richardson family tale is told through song, poetry, and narration.
Slow Death of a Lotus Flower
Co-produced by Benedetta Scuto & Fourth Monkey
12th – 13th March
Slow Death of a Lotus Flower is a surreal play about the clash between idealism and reality, set in a hotel lobby, during the course of a day.
An inexplicable force washes through the lobby and everyone who comes is doomed to face their fears and fight for their ideals, navigating long lasting romances and new encounters through philosophical debates, comedic fights and bursts of passionate dancing. Amongst them, a French trans person leading a company that sells dreams, a hypnotising Portuguese life coach guru, a nameless man trapped in the pages of Dostoevsky and many more cross paths as they dance, debate and fight their way towards death.
A very European cast gives flesh to never before seen protagonists forging a surreal and poetic tragicomedy to bombard the public with love for life. What happens when everything you’ve ever believed in collapses?
The Dissent
Co-produced by Themis Theatre & Fourth Monkey
12th – 13th March
Icarus. Ariadne. Phaedra. Three women whose stories intertwine. Three women whose stories the poets have taken from them to fit a narrative which blames the victim, not the perpetrator. Now they are battling to reclaim their stories and asking why, two and a half thousand years later, the same questions are still being asked of them. But how can they give their accounts when history, the justice system, and language itself is not designed for women.
The play uses physicality and prose contrasted with clown and parody to explore injustice, the language of the patriarchy, and the role it plays in oppressing women’s agency over their own bodies.
