We’re thrilled to our launch of Festival Brochure for 2024. Designed by the amazing Genevieve Krieff, the brochure is the place to start if you want to explore the full festival programme. Witness an incredible range of dance, music, theatre, comedy, visual art and more… you can check out our upcoming festival highlights below!
Download the Festival Brochure
Festival highlights
Festival Opening Night – Friday 28 June
Featuring Jagunlabi, Riverfest & The Ugly Bug Drag Ball
Come together and join us to celebrate the opening of FUSE International 2024. This evening will give you a taster of what’s to come over the next 10 days and gives you the opportunity to discover the exciting range of shows and venues on offer during the festival. From Jagunlabi at Arthur Cotterell Theatre, we invite you to wander over to RIVERFEST on Kingston’s Riverside, before heading down into FUSEBOX to experience a thrilling late night performance of The Ugly Bug Drag Ball.
Jagunlabi (We Birthed a Warrior)
Performed by Peekok YouthARTS Initiatives (PYI), a non-profit, non-governmental and non tribal youth art scheme, offering various arts programmes for youths in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. Jagunlabi is a full-fledged dramatic performance enriched with many themes primarily focusing on human purpose. It is widely understood that every child is born with specific uniqueness and purpose. In Africa, the setting of this show, a child’s name is often motivated by the child’s lineage and what the future or destiny of the child is believed to be. This performance will unravel that mystery. The play highlights themes of courage, selflessness, determination, eradication of social ills, violence against women and children, and most importantly, BRAVERY.
The Ugly Bug Drag Ball
Calling all fans of the creepy and crawly! Pull out your magnifying glasses and prepare to brush up on your GCSE biology as the Ugly Bug Drag Ball a drag and cabaret showcase presenting the best and the brightest of the insect kingdom. Showcasing tantalising displays of bug beauty with flamboyant storytelling there’s something for both fans of bugs and drag alike!
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The Bee from My Head – Saturday 30 June
The Bee from My Head, a production from Acting Up from Bucharest, Romania, is a powerful theatrical performance that explores the resilience of a child overcoming parental neglect, bullying, and loneliness by imagining themselves as a bee. A journey resembling a video game through a dynamic blend of movement, acting, choreography and ensemble work, the talented cast of high schoolers will transport you into the child’s imaginative world, crafted as a defence against life’s challenges.
Now More than Ever – Tuesday 2 July
Now More Than Ever is a three-part contemporary dance performance about appreciating, embracing, and protecting the world that we are part of, recognising that the need to do so has never been greater.
In a time of climate crisis and climate anxiety the piece encourages people to explore their own connection to the planet and to counteract that anxiety with action. The three parts of the piece loosely follow the journey of a group of individuals, first noticing, then grappling with, and then defending the world they are part of – and coming together to do so.
The White Rose – The Musical – Wednesday 3 July
The White Rose – The Musical returns to stage after its SOLD-OUT debut run at Applecart Arts’ Springboard Festival. The tragic, historical tale of the Scholl siblings’ resistance against the Nazis is told through the lens of their father, Robert Scholl. It follows the young revolutionaries to their awakening dissent and formation of The White Rose. With powerful lyricism and an original score, this is not a show to miss!
Ending Interval – Thursday 4 July
Ending Interval is a thought-provoking physical theatre piece examining modern society’s restless acceleration that leaves many struggling to keep up. This poetic, experimental journey, featuring intermedia, provides a radical moment of stillness in the accelerating world for you to think for a second about this social condition.
My Plan for Tomorrow – Friday 5 July
Success means many different things. Accomplishment in some artistic sense, or maybe just lauding it over your contemporaries. Failure could be anything at all.
Hilarious, disturbing and at times uncompromisingly surreal, My Plan For Tomorrow questions what it means to be successful in an increasingly alienated world. Drawing from immersive and experimental theatre, four characters and the audience meet in progressively strange circumstances.
Kingston Music Service: Sing | Play | Watch – Saturday 6 July
Join Kingston Music Service for a day of music making at the Rose Theatre. The day will feature a morning gospel workshop, an open rehearsal in the afternoon and an evening concert. Join the massed band of the Kingston Music Service and Richmond Music Trust in a celebration of all things Concert Band. Expect music you know and love, a few new favourites, and an evening showcasing the work these young musicians have put in.
How to Urn a Living – Saturday 6 July
For generations, Fowler’s Funerals has undertaken the responsibility of lifting the spirits of grieving people. But lately business has been dying down, forcing Mr. Fowler, his shop girl Lilith, and his mortician Wisteria to think outside the (pine) box or risk going under. As they scramble to keep their business alive and satisfy their customers’ bizarre requests, the lengths they will go to protect their (funeral) home are tested. Rich in antics and wacky characters, this East 15 ensemble of international actors thrills and tickles in this comedy of quick wit and outrageous moral quandaries.