Lineup announced for Camden People's Theatre's Sprint Festival

London’s festival of brand new performance for the theatrically adventurous returns for its 21st year at Camden People’s Theatre, 5^th to 24^th March

‘A vital, nourishing seedbed for bold, new and emerging artists’ The Stage.

In another intense hit of creativity, Sprint festival is back for 2018 with three weeks of shows by surprising theatre-makers you’ve yet to meet. Camden People’s Theatre throws open its doors to a brilliant and diverse array of performers and a startling mix of shows.

Returning to CPT following an early performance of their show in the Come As You Are festival is If Britney Could Get Through 2007, We Can Get Through This from non-binary artist, Jo Hague. A punk Britney Spears tribute act, Jo tells of the time their defiant act of shaving their head was deflated by Britney shaving hers a week later.

Digital lifestyles will be under the microscope with Emma Stirling & Nick Finegan’s in Just Like Real Life, Holly Gallagher’s Before (the Line is Lost) explores digital realities, Cosplay and consent; Uncanny Theatre will attempt to stir up Twitter controversy in Outrage; and Factory Irregular’s, Anglo version of Chinese production Together explores mediated communication and online broadcasting.

Other shows in the festival include vital examinations of black masculinity and everyday racism in Typical, from the creators of 2017’s smash-hit Queens of Sheba, Nouveau Riche,and This Is It Theatre’s For a Black Girl. Relationships in all their simplicities and intricacies are unpicked by Yoli Seker and Zlil-hen Saks in Zoog, and Willy Hudson’s Bottom talks about bums, Beyoncé and finding love in an autobiographic, coming-of-age story, which yanks open queer experience and questions if being ‘bottom’ in the bedroom means a ‘bottom’ in life.

Camden Youth Theatre – Camden People’s Theatre, Fitzrovia Centre and New Diorama Theatre new youth theatre – will perform Noise an explosive sonic journey through the worlds inside their headphones, merging theatre and gig. Plus, CPT’s regular Big Bang and Starting Blocks return to support the trying out of very new ideas from the freshest voices.

Brian Logan, artistic director of CPT, said, “Even at a theatre that zeroes in all year round on the fresh-minted, the out-there and the forward-looking, Sprint mainlines the shock of the new. This is when we throw open our doors to the newest artists and the freshest work (in many instances, their first ever professional projects); to theatre-makers we haven’t welcomed before and some friends with hot-off-the-press projects to share. It’s a three-week tumult of innovative new performance, the air’s going to crackle with unexpected ideas – and we look forward to sharing it all with our audiences.”