Croydonites 2023 was the 6th festival, which took place in the year that Croydon was the London Borough of Culture. It was our biggest and most ambitious programme to date comprising 5 commissions for local artists; 10 nationally acclaimed theatre makers; a further 5 local artists and 2 projects with young people
New and exciting faces joined us, plus plenty of old and exciting faces. Lucy McCormick revived her breakthrough cult debut 'Triple Threat', and Abandoman returned due to popular demand with (yet) another Edinburgh hit 'Future Fest'. Hannah Maxwell also took the fringe by storm in 2023 and brought her new show 'Nan, Me and Barbara Pravi' to the festival.
An explosive opening night featured Oona Doherty's 'Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus' a work which has toured internationally since 2017, in a double bill alongside punk performance art trio In Bed with My Brother with 'Trollied', a club show that had us moshing in the aisles.
On the locals front, the unstoppable SLiDE (South London Inclusive Dance Experience) revised their first ever show 'Unexpected Item' and four local artists were been commissioned to make brand new works. Shaniqua Benjamin, Kh Del Rio Smith, Simon Manyonda and Aaron Baksh all premiered new pieces created for the festival.
CroydonBites, our scratch night returned featuring dance, film, comedy, song and performance including work by Chardine Makaveli-Singh, Dick Denham, Made In Paradise, Nathan Brown-Bennett and Katie Rose & Randolph Matthews.
And it didn’t stop there…we had the long awaited return of Sh!t Theatre with a work in progress performance plus Cath Hoffman, Liselle Terret and Norvil & Josephine in a triple bill of absurd song, dance and circus. Croydonites very own Katie Hurley premiered her love letter to Croydon and even Legacy Youth Zone and Meridian High School showed us what they can do!
CroydoWrites was back for all the budding writers of Croydon, and our fantastic video project CROYTOPIA exhibited at Turf Projects.
It really was a lot of fun and we’d like to thank our funders:
This is Croydon, Arts Council England, Mayor of London, National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Until next year…
Photo Credit: The Other Richard