Outdoor performance in London: Greenwich and Docklands International Festival 2014, plus more

A wealth of spectacular outdoor performance art over the summer in London kicks off with GDIF, writes Ellie Broughton 

London’s leading festival for outdoor performing arts opened on Friday for a nine-day run of street theatre, dance and live music – all available for free.

Greenwich and Docklands International Festival (GDIF) rides the top of the wave of enthusiasm that has been swelling for this genre over the last ten years. 

After a spike in popularity after the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies - the latter co-directed by the brain behind GDIF - London has enjoyed two summers of brilliant outdoor shows, and is about to enjoy another. Circus shows, puppetry and acrobatics bust out of dustry West End theatres and flourish in the light of long summer evenings in the capital. 

Londoners will remember the jaw-dropping installation from last year’s festival: a beached whale on the banks of the Thames (produced by Belgian collective Captain Boomer). Another highlight, As The World Tipped, saw dancers on ropes performing on a tilting stage. 

It’s a great chance to experience fringe and international works that don’t suit West End stages. Staging and props that are possible in outdoor productions rival some of the West End’s biggest puppetry and circus shows.

GDIF is also internationally diverse. Performers have been booked from round the world - for example the festival opens with Deblozay, a Haitian celebration for the dead, and includes Kadogo, a Libyan/Chilean production about child soldiers. Making good on the Olympic legacy is the Global Streets programme, all staged at a venue in the Olympic Park. 

As GDIF’s artistic director Bradley Hemmings told Culture Whisper last month: ‘These are incredibly purposeful works of art, which can combine large-scale spectacle, structures that move through an audience, huge casts, great music, pyrotechnics and performance poetry. They bring the political tradition of street theatre into a stadium-type event, and tell a story not through text, but through movement.’

Another ambitious outdoor performing arts festival this summer is the National Theatre’s Watch This Space (27 June-31 August).

The season includes works by UK and European performing arts groups, performing prop-led Shakespeare for children, mime shows for the street, and a water circus. Performances include Tiretu, by a Spanish company Campanya Itinera, that uses huge marionette-hands to turn volunteers into human marionettes, and a paint-splattered celebration of Holi by London company Tara Arts. 

Theatregoers can also catch a free-running-led physical theatre piece called The Roof. Staged in a car park, audience members listen to the score for the play on headphones - a good example of the way outdoor performing arts are approaching tech solutions for the challenges of outdoor staging. 

Meanwhile the City of London Festival opens a pop-up theatre in Paternoster Square (23 June-19 July). The Bowler Hat will stage contemporary dance show Echoes, Catalonian physical theatre production Acrometria, and award-winning acrobatics show Flown. Contemporary choreography by Laban Conservatoire students will also be performed as part of the festival. 

Many performing arts shows pack up for festivals in August and September, but The Southbank Centre’s pop-up circus Udderbelly has shows and events scheduled under canvas until October. 

With the Met Office predicting the hottest summer for eight years, we might even get to enjoy London’s outdoor theatre without getting drenched. 

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