Vault Festival 2019

Vault Festival 2019: Full line-up announced

Will Longman
Will Longman

Vault Festival has announced more than 400 shows which will make up their 2019 programme, which will run from 23rd January through to 17th March next year.

More than 2,000 artists will perform at the festival, which began in 2012 and last year welcomed 70,000 audience members. The 2019 programme will take place across Waterloo, at the main underground Vaults space, plus a variety of other spaces such as the Network Theatre, The Horse and Stables pub, Granby place and a number of pop-up venues.

The theatre programme of the festival is headlined by the immersive folk opera Counting Sheep, which returns to the UK after it ran in Edinburgh in 2016. The piece is about revolution in Ukraine and feature music by Canadian 'guerrilla-folk party-punk band The Lemon Bucket Orkestra.

The New Diorama Theatre will stage some of their recent Edinburgh hits at the festival, including A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad), Director's Cut, Queens of Sheba and The Talented Mr Ripley. Other Edinburgh transfers include The Myth of the Singular Moment and Ladykiller.

Two true crime plays feature in the season: Kompromat follows the final hours of a GCHQ agent, while Pufferfish is based on the life of murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, who took the lives of 17 people between 1978 and 1991.

Other theatrical shows at the festival include Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Tom Lenk as Tilda Swinton in Tilda Swinton Answers and Ad on Craigslist, and a cycle of three plays called Boys, Girls and Care by The PappyShow.

Family shows will include Faceplant Theatre's One Duck Down, an eco-comedy inspired by 7,000 rubber ducks that spilled into the ocean in 1992, Blue Planet III, which sees two interns determined to make a third series of the programme despite the BBC becoming flooded by rising sea levels, and Princess Charming, exploring gender identity for children aged 7 to eleven.

Comedy at this year's festival includes hours by established comics the likes of James Acaster, Phil Wang and Desiree Burch, plus hours from up-and-comers such as Helen Bauer, Chloe Petts and Kayla Macquarie.

Late night events include Pecs Drag King Collective's King for a Night, featuring cabaret and performances from drag kings, a Valentine's Special Eat Your Heart Out! by Shotgun Carousel, and Irish Mob gangster shindig  RUCKUS.

Originally published on

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