VAULT festival announces 2018 line up

The line up for the 6th annual VAULT Festival has been announced with 300 individual shows set to run beneath Waterloo Station and the surrounding areas from 24 January to 18 March.

Musical highlights include an eight week run of Theatre Deli and The Guild of Misrule's Neverland – an immersive musical adaptation of JM Barrie's Peter Pan; Isla van Tricht and Guy Woolf's Great Again, which explores the sensitivities of Trumpian America; and The People's Rock from Nevertheless She, which tells of a dystopian landscape where Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is US presidential candidate.

For 2018, 52 per cent of shows have been written or will be directed by women. Katie Bonna's Paper Scissors Stone looks at gender conditioning, whilst Some Riot Theatre's Edinburgh hit Glitter Punch is about student and teacher relationship boundaries.

Imogen Butler-Cole's solo show Foreign Body deals with healing after sexual assault, and The Strongbox by Stephanie Jacob concerns domestic slavery.

Nicole Acquah's For a Black Girl is a response to the claim that racism doesn't exist in the UK, while Nicole Henriksen's second solo show, A Robot in Human Skin, is a heartfelt look at mental health, and the ways we treat and understand it.

There's also new work from Jessica Butcher (Sparks and Boots), Abi Zakarian (I Have A Mouth And I Will Scream) and Katie Jackson (Conquest).

Other theatre highlights include storyteller James Rowland (Team Viking) returning to the festival with Revelations – a tale about giving his best friend his sperm – and Wound Up Theatre presents Bismillah! An ISIS Tragicomedy about two Brits who meet on either side of a radical divide.

The festival has also teamed up with iF Platform (Integrated Fringe) to showcase the work of companies and artists producing work with disabled and non-disabled artists, including Mind the Gap's MIA: Daughters of Fortune about the learning disability and parenthood.

LGBTQ highlights include Gypsy Queen – a response to homophobia in boxing – Christopher Adams’s Queer Noir play Tumulus, a murder mystery that explores the dangers of the London chemsex culture, and Rhum & Clay's physical theatre comedy Testosterone follows Kit as he transitions from female to male in his early thirties.

Elsewhere in the festival there is circus from Chivaree Circus, comedy from Joe Lycett and a host of themed bars and street food outlets.