Greenwich + Docklands International Festival announce highlights from 2021 programme
Photo credit: Chloe Elizabeth
London’s leading outdoor performing arts festival, Greenwich & Docklands International Festival, have announced highlights from this year’s programme, scheduled to take place from 27 August – 11 September, across Royal Greenwich, the City of London, Canary Wharf, Thamesmead, and the Royal Docks.
The programme for this year’s festival will be a response to the pressing current issues, including the BLM movement, climate change, disability access, and community resilience as we emerge from the pandemic. The event hopes to bring about optimism and hope through their programme of uplifting and spectacular theatre, dance, street art, and installations.
Highlights announced today include Swiss artist Dan Archer’s Borealis, which will light up the sky over Greenwich from 27-30 August. It’s the second installation of Archer’s to feature at this year’s festival, as his previously announced We Are Watching will open the festival on 27 August.
Artistic Director of Actors Touring Company, Matthew Xia will direct Family Tree, a new work-in-progress play by Mojisola Adebayo, focusing on the life of Henrietta Lacks and questioning themes around exploitation and ethics in healthcare. The site-responsive, promenade piece will be performed at Charlton House from 27-30 August.
Jeanefer Jean-Charles’s Black Victorians will be presented in the City of London as a full-scale dance piece from 31 August-2 September. The piece celebrates the forgotten history of Black Britons as part of the City’s Outdoor Arts programme, A Thing of Beauty. It will then move to Woolwich Garrison Church on 10 & 11 September.
The Diplomatic Representation of Flanders to the UK and GDIF are partnering for 2021-22 in a celebration of European artistic collaboration, meaning the festival will also play host to plenty of outstanding Flemish theatre too, including Flemish theatre company De Roovers reimagining of Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills. A site-specific piece, which will take the audience on a journey to a hidden Thamesmead landscape, officially closed to the public for more than a century, from 7-11 September.
Laika’s sensory and immersive piece Balsam, will also run from 7-11 September. It will offer the audience a magically interactive experience at the Royal Arsenal’s Building 41. The site, which was a former ammunition factory, will open as a major new arts venue Woolwich Works later this year.
There’s plenty for families to enjoy at the festival too, in particular the ever-popular Greenwich Fair, which brings together street arts, circus, dance, and theatre on the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College and Cutty Sark Gardens, will return on 29 August.
Rounding out the festival on 10-11 September is Healing Together, which builds on the work of the festival over the years within communities in Woolwich and North Woolwich and highlights the work of Deaf and disabled artists. It will feature co-created installations, street art, theatre, circus, and spectacle, in which the historic Woolwich Ferry will play a starring role.
A full line-up for the festival will be announced on 10 June 10, and further information about the programme announced today, as well as where to get tickets is available on their website here.
