Now in its twelfth year, the festival brings together artists from across the globe in a celebration of intercultural theatre. produced by The Cockpit, the festival has expanded year-on-year, continuing to grow in scope while staying true to its grassroots ethos of championing early-career, international and underrepresented artists.
With more panlingual and migrant-led performances than before, the three-week festival presents a carefully curated programme of 110 shows and events spanning 70 languages, with 450 artists, and staged across eight London venues.
The festival has long acted as a launchpad for early-career artists working in theatre, platforming their work across the capital:
Host venues are:
Barons Court Theatre, Etcetera Theatre, Theatre Deli, The Playground Theatre, The Questors Theatre, Theatro Technis, The Space Theatre, and the festival’s home and producer, The Cockpit.
At a time of growing division, creative endeavours like Voila! are a vital part of the UK’s cultural landscape. Based in London – the most linguistically and culturally diverse city in the country – the festival celebrates different languages, opens windows into other cultures, and spotlights world-class theatre and stories from across borders.
With a focus on programming work using as many languages as possible, Voila! Theatre Festival offers a huge range of performances from all over the world; offering performances, scratch nights, live streams, workshops, and events, with a strong focus on multilingual and migrant-led work. The programme is panlingual, multidisciplinary and fully committed to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).
To encourage as broad an audience as possible, more than half the programme is performed bilingually (English plus another language), with surtitles for any show that is not performed in English, to ensure accessibility for all. This panlingual approach ensures that all performances are fully accessible to English-speaking audiences, and at the same time empowers non-English-speaking creatives to devise work that spotlights their native culture and stories, whilst also helping London venues connect with non-English-speaking communities, fostering social cohesion, cultural exchange and greater involvement in the arts.
A small selection of the exceptionally wide array of work on offer at each of the venues includes:
The Cockpit: Mendaki (Eclipse Award winner, by Khai and Faizal), a powerful solo reclaiming Muslim-Malay-Singaporean identity from colonial erasure. Plus The Uncontainable Nausea of Alec Baldwin (TG Works), physical theatre fused with AI, live-streaming and projections, previously selected for the 2025 Biennale College Teatro in Venice, which was curated by Willem Dafoe.
Barons Court: Absent, an Iraqi story of life under sanctions in 1990s Baghdad, adapted from Betool Khedairi’s bestselling novel (one of the highest-selling books by an Arabic author in English) by translator and playwright Penny Black (who has translated over 40 plays for theatres such as the Royal Court, The Gate, National Theatre, and The Lyric Hammersmith) and directed by Svetlana Dimcovic.
Etcetera: Hansal & Geetal, an offbeat and body-led performance where tradition meets surprise by Toronto duo Sachin Sharma and Shreya Parashar (Two 2 Mango), weaving Hindi, Urdu and English.
Theatre Deli: Be Gay, for God’s Sake is a sharp, time-bending queer new-writing drama told with a dose of satirical mischief from East Asian-led company Oh My My, developed on Theatre Deli’s Voila residency scheme.
The Playground: Naran Ja is a visually playful piece by logica picnic and azza-har, exploring human and non-human encounters and interrogating the hierarchies we tragically uphold to try to make sense of the world.
The Questors: How to Be a Romantic, a one-person ‘jukebox opera’ remixing classic arias to tell a new story for modern times and reflect on love today.
Theatro Technis: Never Just I, a solo performance by Cypriot dancer Evie Demetriou which beautifully blends dynamic movement, humour and storytelling to explore womanhood, motherhood and identity.
The Space: Viddani/Devoted, a musical interactive performance told through Ukrainian folk-singing by Spivanka, supported by Barbican’s Imagine Fund and Old Diorama Arts Centre.
Fae Fichtner, co-Director of Voila! Theatre Festival says, “At a time of political unrest and shrinking arts funding, it takes real courage to share work outside commercial norms. Fringe exists to amplify underrepresented voices, and we’re honoured to stand with artists and venues who risk telling authentic stories that reflect their values and experiences. Voila! Theatre Festival 2025 will be our biggest festival yet, with artists from across the world coming together to share their stories.”
Katharina Reinthaller, co-Director of Voila! Theatre Festival says, “We were honoured by the variety, quality and number of applications we received for Voila! Theatre Festival this year, and are proud to continue to platform work by multilingual artists. Language is a barrier to engagement in the arts in London, where up to 30% of Londoners speak a language other than English as their first language. More than 250 languages are spoken in the capital, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. However, this is not mirrored in the work we see on British Stages; there’s still little diversity and cultural exchange, and we still don’t hear enough accents on stage. We hope to strengthen the bond with the communities around local venues by presenting work in their native languages and open up a conversation to connect audiences and artists.’’
