Velenzia Spearpoint and Rebecca Pryle are theatre leaders in London, best known for co-running The Bread & Roses Theatre and the Lambeth Fringe. As this year’s Lambeth Fringe heads into its halfway point [ending on 25 Oct], I asked them to tell me more about what’s going on.
Lambeth Fringe has returned bigger and better this year. Can you give us a flavour of what to expect across the programme?
This year feels like a really exciting next chapter for The Lambeth Fringe. We’ve grown to 28 venues, with over 200  different events across five weeks, so a huge amount is happening across the borough.
The best thing about the programme is just how varied it is. You might see a piece of experimental theatre one night, a comedy show the next, then cabaret, live music, a family show, a short film, spoken word or something that doesn’t fit neatly into any one category. There’s new writing, established work, emerging artists, touring productions, and plenty of shows that are taking creative risks.
I think there’s something for everyone, but it’s also a festival where you can take a chance on something you wouldn’t necessarily have gone to see otherwise. We want people to discover new artists, stumble across something unexpected and experience the breadth of live performance happening on their doorstep.
You are using a lot of very different venues to showcase works in the Fringe. How do you and the artists make the decision about what works where, and which is your most unusual venue?
One of the things that makes Lambeth Fringe special is that we’re not asking every show to fit into the same kind of space. We work with venues across the borough, from established performance spaces to pubs, libraries, studios and community venues, and each one brings something different to the festival.
We look at what a show actually needs, whether that’s a technical setup, a particular atmosphere, audience capacity or the opportunity to interact with the space in a different way. We also want artists to think creatively about where their work could live. Sometimes a less conventional space can add something to a performance that you simply wouldn’t get in a traditional theatre. We’re really interested in that relationship between the work and the place it’s performed in, and in making the festival feel embedded in the borough rather than contained within theatre buildings.
Some of our more unique venues this year include St Stephen’s Chapel in West Norwood and Vauxhall City Farm, alongside new additions like House of NEON! Each brings something different to the festival and allows artists to present their work in spaces audiences might not usually associate with performance. That’s one of the things we love about The Lambeth Fringe: seeing live performances take place in all sorts of settings across the borough.
You rebranded to Lambeth Fringe after several years as Clapham Fringe, based at the Bread and Roses. Has the change attracted a different kind of audience?
The change to The Lambeth Fringe was really about recognising what the festival had become and where we wanted it to go. It began in 2015 at The Bread & Roses Theatre, which is still a really important part of our identity, but over the years it’s grown beyond Clapham and into other parts of the borough.
Becoming The Lambeth Fringe allowed us to build relationships with more venues and communities and to reach people who might not previously have thought of the festival as something for them.
It’s probably too early to say that we’ve attracted one entirely different kind of audience, because building audiences takes time. But we’re creating more opportunities for people to encounter the festival locally, whether that’s by visiting their local pub, discovering a performance in a library or going to a venue they’ve never been to before.
We want Lambeth Fringe to belong to the whole borough, while still holding on to the independent, grassroots spirit that it grew out of.
Can you talk a bit about the programming model, and how you curate the festival?
Our model brings together a network of venues and artists from across the borough. Artists apply directly to participating venues, and we work with those venues to shape the overall festival programme, creating a varied mix of work across different art forms, styles and spaces. We want the programme to feel diverse and exciting, while staying true to our commitment to supporting independent artists and championing underrepresented voices.
We look at the quality and ambition of the work, how it could fit within a venue (and in a fringe set-up!), how it might connect with audiences and how it contributes to the overall mix of the programme. We’re interested in supporting emerging artists as well as more established companies and in giving space to work that might be experimental, unconventional or difficult to categorise.
A big part of our role is creating the conditions for artists to put their work in front of audiences. We know how difficult it can be to find performance opportunities, particularly for independent artists, so we try to keep the festival as open and affordable as we can.
We also want the programme to reflect the diversity of Lambeth. Championing working-class artists, LGBTQ+ artists and global-majority artists is important to us, alongside making room for work that challenges expectations and brings different perspectives into the mix.
What are you still looking for in terms of shows and genres that might be missing from your line-up for 2027 and beyond?
I think the answer is always more of the things that surprise us! We’re interested in work that pushes at the boundaries of what a fringe festival can be, whether that’s performance art, immersive work, interdisciplinary projects, live art, experimental music or something that combines several different forms.
We’d also love to keep reaching artists and audiences who might not traditionally see themselves reflected in theatre or feel that fringe festivals are for them. That means continuing to make space for different voices and experiences and work that comes from outside the usual theatre networks.
We want to hear from artists with ideas they’re excited about, especially those who are making work in unexpected ways or who might be looking for a space to try something out.
Ultimately, we want The Lambeth Fringe to keep evolving. We want artists to feel that they can bring us an idea that doesn’t fit neatly into a box and for audiences to come along with an open mind and discover something they didn’t know they were looking for!