A Stage for Every Story: Meet the Directors Behind London’s Voila! Theatre Festival

With 101 shows and events, 450 artists and more than 60 languages represented across eight London venues, Voila! Theatre Festival returns this November with its most ambitious programme yet. Championing migrant artists, multilingual storytelling and bold new approaches to performance, the festival continues to grow while remaining committed to its grassroots ethos. Ahead of the 2026 edition, co-directors Fae Fichtner and Katharina Reinthaller discuss the challenges of bringing such a diverse programme to life, the importance of creating opportunities for underrepresented artists, and why theatre has a unique power to bring communities together.

Voila! arrives in 2026 with 101 shows and events, 450 artists and 60 languages across eight London venues. What feels different about this year’s festival compared with even twelve months ago?

Fae Fichtner: I have noticed that people know the festival more than they used to. When I brought my first ever producing work to the Voila in 2019, most of my peers and friends had never heard it. Now when I mention that I am involved with the festival, people are more often reacting with genuine excitement and interest. Katharina Reinthaller: I second that. It’s really great to notice the festival getting more coverage and firmly establishing itself as a London fringe festival. For me personally, some processes in the organisation side of the festival feel easier. With the festival branching out into a multi venue umbrella festival for the first time, it felt that 2024 really was a trial year, which we could strenghthen further in 2025. This year it feels we can put more time towards the things I personally think are most important - to support the artists in the festival, the marketing strategy to make sure the festival reaches people and focus on collaborations with creative partners.

Last year saw record-breaking ticket sales for Voila!. Has that growth changed what you felt able - or perhaps had a responsibility - to do with the 2026 programme?

Fae: As we programme over an open call we have seen more high value applications over the last years with not enough slots to give away to all these amazing shows. We are hoping to slowly grow further while keeping it sustainable for us and our workload. Another aim for the next few years is to capture our audiences more, understand who is attending our shows and how they relate to the ethos of the festival. We weren’t able to secure the funding for this work this year but will definitely try again in the hope to find out more about our community.

Katharina: Growth can be a tricky beast - we wanted to grow Voila in a sustainable way - giving more artists a chance to showcase their work whilst also making sure they don’t end up with five people in the audience. But it also means we can take more ‘risks’ when we programme the shows - with more established artists joining, we can dedicate more time to support artists who might bring a show to a festival for the first time and therefore might need a little more support.

This year’s programme moves between everything from diaspora and displacement to climate, identity, relationships, folklore and absurdist comedy. When you looked across the applications for this year’s festival, were there particular themes, concerns or ideas that kept surfacing in the work artists wanted to make in 2026?

Fae: One that particularly stood out to me this year was the amount of shows about motherhood that had applied. A few made it into the festival as well. In a world where we see more and more attempts to limit women’s bodily autonomy, it did not feel surprising that this topic came to be important for many artists.

K: There is also a thread of reimagined myths - we have a show from Taiwan Lament of the Wandering Head, which transforms a Southeast Asian myth - the flying human head - into an exploration of diaspora, displacement, and identity. Or Legend of Kaliakra - inspired by the legend of forty maidens who chose death over slavery, this show explores the hidden lives of women behind one of Bulgaria's most enduring stories. This is what I love so much about Voila - you learn something new, get to understand more about people from different countries through the stories that make them.

More than half of this year’s programme will be performed in English alongside at least one other language. What have artists done with language this year that particularly surprised or excited you?

K: I think this year it’s really interesting what artists do without spoken language, but more in terms of form. For example we have a show called Huella by a brilliant french-tunisian artist, whose practice draws on improvisation, Vogue and flamenco aesthetics, engaging with femininities and ecological transformations. Or Rhino! blending Tanztheater and drama, by company formed of artists from Japan, Germany, Philippines and the UK. Both use minimal spoken language, so I’m really excited to experience these works.

2026 has brought new opportunities including the inaugural Instituto Cervantes x Voila! Grant and the continuing Theatre Deli development residency. How important is it that Voila! increasingly offers artists development opportunities as well as a place to perform?

Katharina: We are so grateful for the collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes. Shows bringing work from abroad take a greater financial risk, they often don’t have a big network in the UK or London, making it harder to sell tickets, so any financial support will go a long way. Theatre Deli has been a long standing Voila! partner, a collaboration we are also very proud of, as our ethos of supporting emerging artists aligns strongly. From the festival side, we started to provide artists workshops around logistic and creative processes of bringing a show to a festival. We have found that drama schools often fail to teach the real world scenario, that when you make your own work you are the producer, director, social media and finance person all in one - and it is tricky to juggle all these hats. So we offer workshops around writing the copy for your show, producing & budgeting, press & marketing - which has made a huge difference in how artists can now navigate the festival, any festival really and hopefully take it into their further creative adventures.

Fae: If we had our way, we would be offering way more financial support and R&D opportunities. Finding funding for that work has become more and more difficult and we are incredibly grateful for the support we can offer through our current network. Fringe theatre is where many artists start out but it is not cheap and takes a lot of skill to simply break even. Our cooperation with Theatermakers is there to support the development aspects for emerging artists in the festival. We’ve seen a lot of opportunities disappear over the last years and many venues close, which heightens the pressure to continue if not expand. But even before this was the case, we always had our future wishlist of opportunities we would love to be able to offer. Things like a fund for Cymraeg and Gaelic shows as well as contemporary circus shows looking into innovative ways of using multiple languages on stage.

There are artists coming to Voila! from very different theatrical traditions and parts of the world. Is there one production, idea or form in this year’s programme that made you think, “London audiences probably haven’t seen anything quite like this before”?

Katharina: Id’ say that’s probably the case for a lot of the shows in the festival - whether by form or content. But who stands out as unique this year is Rostro X Eminem (at the Cockpit) - a solo piece fusing classical Cello and Eminem’s Hip Hop energy. Or The View (at the Space) - an experimental theatrical nature documentary. Or Temporary Authorization (at Theatro Technis) - an interactive theatre experience about immigration, bureaucracy and what it means to exist temporarily.

With 101 shows and events on offer, audiences inevitably have to make choices. How would you advise audiences to navigate the programme?

Katharina: I would say get yourself a really nice, big piece of cake and a coffee and grab the festival brochure - it’s a good start to browse. On our website you can filter the shows by Venue, Date and Language - which can be useful to help choose a show. And don’t forget that this year we also have some cool events alongside the shows - a workshop around how to make work in multiple languages and a panel talk about panlingual dramaturgies, in collaboration with UAL Wimbledon. What I personally also love to do at the festivals is just take chance - open the brochure, pick a show, go on an adventure.

Voila! is now a much bigger festival than it was only a few years ago, but you’ve spoken about retaining its grassroots ethos as it grows. What have you consciously done differently in 2026 to protect that?

Fae: We will continue to programme via an open call to ensure that anybody can apply with any idea. We have kept the participation fees as low as possible in the current economy. We want to add more venues both small and large to ensure we can host more of the beautiful shows that apply to us but we are taking this process slow to ensure it remains sustainable. The festival at its core is giving space to those underrepresented on London stages.

Katharina: The shows programmed are carefully curated by the venues - we encourage them to really look at their audiences, local community and potential audiences. We make sure we are transparent with artists about what to expect from the festival, what we provide and can support with and what we can’t help with. And I think the most important thing is that we stay accessible to artists. We want to create a friendly and supportive atmosphere, where artists feel seen and acknowledged. This luckily coincides with my favourite part of the festival - which is seeing all the brilliant shows!

If someone came to Voila! for the first time in 2026 and saw three completely different shows across three different venues, what would you hope they understood about the festival by the end of that experience?

Fae: That they might have just learned more about the reality of the person living next door, running the local corner shop or commuting alongside them by stepping into the world of someone from a different background.

Katharina: I think they would understand much more about the world we live in and that we can celebrate our differences by meeting each other. They’d realise that theatre is a wonderful collective experience, one that unites people - something that in a time where we live so much of our lives separated by digital realm is important to come back to. And they will have hopefully had a fun time and see more shows!

For tickets and more information on the Voila! Theatre Festival, visit: https://www.voilafestival.co.uk/