LIFT 2022 festival reveals full programme

LIFT, the biennial festival of international theatre, has announced full details for its 2022 programme.

Concluding the organisation's 40th anniversary year, the event marks the first full festival to be presented by artistic director and CEO Kris Nelson and executive director Stella Kanu following the cancellation of LIFT 2020 due to the global pandemic.

Nelson commented: "We're so thrilled to be bringing LIFT 2022 to life. London, it's been too long.

"Taking ‘Unexpected Perspectives' as our theme, LIFT 2022 asks you to physically shift how you take in the world and experience performance – whether that's from a birds' eye view, around a campfire, or a game played in a shopping centre. In this year's line-up you'll meet artists from Nairobi to Vilnius, Milano to Helsinki and from right here in London. They are playing with scale – from a maximalist slice of life featuring hundreds of performers (and several tons of sand), to very intimate and personal experiences. They're proposing theatrical and performative ways for us to interact and engage with the world's pressing issues and urgent stories."

Main highlights of the season include the UK premiere of Sun & Sea, billed as "a climate opera-performance on a beach that you watch from above". The piece is by Lina Lapelytė, Vaiva Grainytė and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, and will play at The Albany (23 June to 10 July).

Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill's The Making of Pinocchio will run at The Grand Hall in Battersea Arts Centre (29 June to 2 July) marking its UK stage premiere. Developed as an autobiographical response to MacAskill's gender transition, the production reimagines the story of the little lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy'.

The Nest Collective's world premiere of The Feminine and the Foreign, described as "a collection of intimate documentary portraits of Black activists", will be staged at Shipwright in Deptford on 2 July.

The world premiere of Radio Ghost by ZU-UK (2 to 3 July) will see patrons undertake an interactive audio ghost hunt through three of London's shopping centres: Brent Cross, The Mall Wood Green and Exchange Ilford.

The UK premiere of Գիշեր | gisher by artist Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin will run at the Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler's Wells (6 to 8 July).The piece mixes live elements and video performance to explore themes of geography, the body, identity, heritage and conflict, with audience members sat around an outdoor fire for the second part of the show. London facilitation is by Jamila Johnson-Small.

Tickets for all LIFT 2022 productions start at £5 and many of the shows offer a pay-what-you-can system.

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