Lisa Wolfe dives in to Out There International Festival of Outdoor Arts and Circus 2025 – and emerges refreshed…
It’s disgraceful. Thirty-five years in the industry and this is my first visit to the mighty Out There Festival. Better late than never. The reasons for making it this year are threefold: I’m producing an outdoor theatre piece (Holy Dirt, premiering in July) and need a break from spreadsheets; it’s FRESH Street, Circostrada’s International Conference for the Development of Outdoor Arts, so I can meet and mingle with experts; and as a ‘mature’ emerging artist on a funded programme of creative exploration, it’s a chance to watch, listen and learn.
Having not been to Great Yarmouth since I was a nipper, I first need to get acquainted with this quintessentially English seaside town in the unexpected heat of late May. The strip of arcades, exotically named Caesars Palace and The Flamingo, is just like Southend where I grew up. I immediately feel at home. Time to metaphorically dive in, the sea here being notoriously shallow.
The seafront is one of the key Out There Festival locations, this year home to Beach of Dreams, where 800 colourful silk banners are blowing boldly. The flags have been created as part of a multi-artform project, with Great Yarmouth as one of three East Coast Coastal Heritage sites engaged in an exploration of the role that the shifting coastline plays in shaping our collective dreams. This collaborative story-gathering project, funded by Historic England, invited participants to work with artists to explore the unique coastal histories that have shaped these places. Gathered stories were translated into silk pennant designs, created with Kinetika, expert silk flag-makers and pioneers of community-driven art and design. Great Yarmouth was the final location of Kinetika’s May tour.
The Beach of Dreams also features a performance stage, tents for discussions, a pop-up bar, and a huge bamboo climbing frame to give bold young climbers a taste of circus.
On the stage, Bristol’s Many Hands Circus are just finishing their ambitious new show Obscure Desires. Touring this year mainly to indoor venues, it looks great against the sea and broad expanse of Yarmouth sky. The large troupe with a live three-piece band give athletic performances of gymnastic acrobatics in high wind. Impressive.
It’s also here, on the steps behind Costa, where I gamely join a small group holding dainty umbrellas to meet Jones and Barnard, well-seasoned street performers, merciless in their approbation of late-arriving Fresh Street delegates. Gareth Jones and Matt Barnard are familiar faces to Out There Festival regulars and hotly tipped by my enthusiastic landlady who shares her in depth knowledge of the programme each morning at breakfast. This is only the second outing of their new show Dream Tours, a ‘Made in Great Yarmouth’ Out There Festival Commission.
Eventually assembled, holding small paper bags in which we’ve poured some sand, we set off. Entertainingly led, and learning an umbrella dance, we amble through back streets where dreams come to die (a boarded-up hotel) and dirty dreams get washed (the launderette) before settling on a rather scrubby patch of green with a billowing curtain and a gong.
Gong duly banged, a cast of actors and local participants welcome us, in roles ranging from Insomnia – Paschale Straiton at her eccentric best – to an Astrologer who reveals dreams’ meanings; and two cloaked figures who will swallow your dreams, provided you can blow up a black balloon. It’s up to the visitor to engage with these individuals one-to-one, hence some standing about or hesitancy from those less keen to engage, and a little more guidance would be useful here. When we do get to meet the Sandman in his tented enclosure for a tale and a task, we’re amply rewarded before the journey recommences.
On the stage of the marvellous Hippodrome, we help fulfil someone’s life-long dream through the power of song and dance, umbrellas whirling in joyful unison, then it’s back into town for the grand finale.
Interspersed with Jones and Barnard’s site-related patter we’ve been hearing recordings of local peoples’ dreams, real or invented, and it’s on a back street that one of these is realised big-time by the whole cast. The invention and fun of this final set-piece perfectly captures the strangeness of dreams and the joy of the seaside in summer. It’s childishly stupid, and stupidly thrilling.
The beach is also the starting point for a very different approach to street theatre – Kamchatka by Kamchatka, a company formed in Barcelona that’s been working site-specifically with migrant communities since 2006.
Suddenly everyone is looking east. On the glimmering sand, a horizontal line of drably-clad people, small suitcases in hand, is moving towards us. Their steps hesitant, equally spaced, slowly paced. We are as silent as they, breath held. It’s a heart-stopping and poignant opening to a work as this beautifully framed image slowly comes into focus. They are six men and two women; they don’t speak but seem to intuit each other’s thoughts as with elegant motion and quizzical glances they approach a flimsy barrier.
With an uncanny mix of curiosity and determination the group coerces the audience to do its bidding; they’re at a border, can we help them cross it? Communication is by look, gesture and physical action choreographic in sweep. Lift the pram over the rope? With the baby in it? Of course. Whilst working seamlessly together they are very much individual characters, Prisca Villa earthy and playful, Andrea Lorenzetti, aloof and business-like. The differences become more notable when the action moves to the street and games begin. Suitcases are piled and tipped, an audience member is lifted and caught in a bravura show of trust.
Moving like a flash-mob they are eight humans audaciously stopping traffic, hijacking the Dotto train, climbing up a bus, being abused by drivers on the busy road. They are seeking our help, searching for loved ones, for a way in or a way out. You feel that wherever this piece is performed, the themes of difference and integration will impact strongly on its watchers, and the laughter, of which there will be plenty, tinged with melancholy at the mess we’re in.
Moving in-land to the town centre, a large wrist-banded crowd is gathered at the Market Place. The air thrums with anticipation. Help! Three deranged looking clowns, faces daubed with colour, clothes a mix of battered jackets, shapeless trousers, and one filthy ruff, are upon us, pushing through backpacks, bashing one another and generally causing a ruckus. They are not happy fellows. It seems we may be witnesses to something – better follow them, and quick!
So starts Catalan circus and street theatre veterans Los Galindos’ extraordinary and unforgettable show MDR – Death From Laughter, a UK Premiere. “No photos! No film,” barks Marcel Escolano’s fierce, wild-haired Rossinyol, self-proclaimed troupe leader, bristling with nervous rage. We’re in a secret, illegal space, there’s been a death and is about to be another, so we need to keep this to ourselves. From uncomfortable perches on upturned buckets, the audience reluctantly conforms.
Yet what a wonderfully visual show this would be to capture, the pure effervescent creativity of it as, on a set that looks thrown together from scaffolding poles and planks, workaday objects transform into weapons, power tools go ape, a portaloo comes alive, and a scene of increasingly messy chaos unfolds.
Poor Melon (Gabriel Agosti) has made a joke so funny that someone died laughing, so in clown logic he must be executed in return. How to kill him is the meat of the story, the set and props creating a perilous playground for director Bet Garrell to exploit in increasingly transgressive ways.
Mardi, here called Tuesday (a fearless Anicet Leon, or possibly Buster Keaton reincarnated) flip-flops from helping or hindering this murder to happen. The trio has a wickedly insincere dynamic; in love one minute, loathing with vengeance the next.
With split-second acrobatics, gasp-inducing falls, and seemingly scant concern for audience or their own safety, MDR is an ingenious masterpiece that pushes all your buttons simultaneously: joy, fear, disgust and delight. Tell all your friends – no, don’t!
From an urban site to a park now, St George’s, buzzing with shows and food stalls, Paka The Uncredible’s fire dragon Elsie, side-shows and walkabouts. It’s here I bumped into the delightful oddity Pushmi-Pullyu, by stalwarts of the comedic walkabout scene, Cocoloco, the concept lifted from Dr Doolittle, and here entrancing and baffling passers-by with their existential conversation from both ends of a furry grey lama. Fun is had persuading kids to sit on their rump or join a tug-of-war which would split them in two. The chemistry between Helen Statman and Trevor Stuart and their playful, intelligent banter comes from years of working as a double act; this show connects them even more strongly, right through their fluffy middles.
One of several steel-deck rigs in the park hosts French duo Alta Gama’s ‘minimal circus’ show Mentir Lo Minimo, a UK premiere.
It’s not until half-way through that performer Alejo Gomboa makes the big reveal. We’ll have admired his agility at riding a bicycle in a continuous circle. At how Amanda Delgado climbs his and the bike’s frame in intricate, elegant ways. How the motion of their bodies and the wheels seem in unison with each other, backed by Pere Vilaplana’s French-tinged music and Delgado’s live singing, operatic in range.
What the audience, sitting up close, some on the stage itself, are not expecting is for Gomboa to out himself as, to quote travel writer Tom Vernon, a ‘Fat Man On A Bicycle’. He’s a man who unabashedly loves to eat.
Alejo Gomboa’s large size, and the childhood physical disability that Amanda Delgado has overcome, add a very human dimension to a work that keeps tightly to its format – a journey of circles and balances, suspension and release. There’s humour too: Gomboa is in his pants after all, and he’s a happy man both within his frame and steering one.
A feast of a show.
Feeling peckish yourself? Pif-Paf’s Toast could be just the show to catch. As portable stage sets go, theirs is a beauty. A gayly painted wagon, all wicker baskets and travelling rugs, doubles as a makeshift kitchen and musical box. This sung and spoken show comprises stories collected by performer and company founder Pete Gunson from his hometown of Sheffield. Folks’ tales cross boundaries and Toast is all embracing, generously serving Cypriot dumplings doused with honey and cinnamon. A lovely sounding, smelling, looking (the costumes have proper attention to period detail) and tasting show –there should be one on every street corner.
Down from the park on a further expanse of greenery is another ‘Made in Great Yarmouth’ commission. It’s pleasing to see a splatter of contemporary dance in Tony and Ray Find Their Feet by Rudkin and Hicks, Matt Rudkin’s Naïve Dance Masterclass being an all-time favourite. Who wouldn’t rather be dancing than cleaning the stage? Presented in long and short versions at pitches all over town, the pair’s distinctive style – Hicks deadpan, Rudkin expressive – works the crowd as our two luckless caretakers go about their job. With slapstick, magic and visual jokes it’s a lovely, gentle throwback to the best of music-hall double-acts, and sends me dancing home.
Featured image (top) Beach of Dreams at Out There Festival 2025. Photo James Bass
Freelance producer and Total Theatre writer Lisa Wolfe attended Out There Festival and FRESH Street conference in Great Yarmouth, 28–30 May 2025.
Out There Arts produce the annual Out There International Festival of Street Arts & Circus – now in its 17th year and one of the three largest free Outdoor Arts festivals in the UK – with 30-50+ artistic companies and audiences of 60,000+.
Out There Arts – National Centre for Outdoor Arts & Circus is a registered charity and Arts Council England funded National Portfolio Organisation.
FRESH STREET is a flagship conference for the outdoor arts and circus sector, held every two years, bringing together key European and international artists, programmers, and policymakers for three days of dynamic discussions and stimulating exchanges on how we can imagine the outdoor arts of tomorrow.
FRESH STREET#5 was co-organised by Circostrada Network and Out There Arts in the frame of Out There Festival, in partnership with Outdoor Arts UK. It took place 28–31 May 2025 at The Hippodrome, England’s only surviving dedicated circus building.
https://www.circostrada.org/en/actions/fresh-street-5
Holy Dirt, a new collaboration between Vidya Thirunarayan (Indian dancer and potter) and David Glass (theatre maker and director) premieres at Ensemble Festival, London 26 and 27 July 2025.
A miniature epic dream play embodying the spirits of Parashakti (Vidya) and Draupadi (Sasha Krohn), Holy Dirt brings together street performance traditions of Southern India and European physical theatre. Co-commissioned by Certain Blacks and Art Asia, supported by Arts Council England and 101 Outdoor Arts Creation Centre, co-produced with InKo Centre (India). https://www.vidyathirunarayan.com/holy-dirt
Available for UK booking in 2026. Contact producer Lisa Wolfe on wolfework2@gmail.com