Another Successful Accidental Festival

Take 21 young producers. Give them 4 days to programme whatever they want.
What happens next…? The Accidental Festival 2012!

Between 31 May and 3 June, the Roundhouse, Camden, was taken over by Central students for the seventh Accidental Festival. The venue was transformed into a magic playground with promenade performances, live music, films and giant games happening alongside a diverse programme of selected performances. Using three very different studio spaces in the Roundhouse, the Accidental Festival showed work from emerging and established artists from every end of the spectrum – from comedy and new writing to puppetry, dance and live art.

The Accidental Festival is an annual event organised by students from Central’s BA (Hons) Theatre Practice; Performance Arts strand.  Founded in 2005 by Pathway leader Karl Rouse and students studying BA Theatre Practice, the festival has developed into something quite profound; giving students experience in practical producing, a skill that can’t be gained from books, and at the same time providing an opportunity for the new generation of artists to showcase their work for free.

An invited audience of nearly 100 alumni, staff, students and industry came for the opening of the festival on Thursday 31 May. Guests enjoyed a drinks reception followed by a photography exhibition with piano music from Denis Fernando and a physical theatre performance of The Gambler from Theatre Re, which was partly developed thanks to the Accidental Festival. Guillaume Pigé, founder and Artistic Director of Theatre Re said:

“The Accidental Festival has had an enormous influence on the development of the company over the past two years. It gave us a first stage; something to aim for… and then we were able to build on that experience to go further artistically and production-wise. It is not easy to take the risk to programme an emerging theatre company. We are very thankful to the Accidental Festival team for taking that risk.”

With a year to plan, who knows what our students will come up with for Accidental Festival 2013!