London International Festival of Theatre

LIFT
Artistic director	Mark Ball

The London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) is a biennial festival of theatre, performance and cultural events. The organisation also supports year-round activity in London. The organisation was founded by Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal, with the first festival in 1981 hoping to ‘challenge British theatre and open a window on the world’ .

Lyn Gardner in the Guardian newspaper wrote of LIFT in 2014, 'Probably no theatre organisation in the UK has done more to break down the distinctions between artforms than LIFT, which over the last 30 years has not only offered us a first glimpse of work by world-class theatre makers, but also offered space for first-hand theatrical dispatches from artists living with conflict and under oppression who find space denied them in their own country.'

LIFT's current artistic director is Mark Ball.

Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal founded LIFT as young graduates from Warwick University. The first international festival of theatre in England, they quickly developed support in the face of much adversity, gaining several trustees and high-profile patrons such as Peter Ustinov and Lady Molly Daubeny, (the widow of Sir Peter Daubeny founder of World Theatre Seasons). Sue Arnold, a regular columnist at the Observer, impressed by the hard work of Fenton and Neal, wrote: ‘if the Festival is not a phenomenal success I shall eat an entire millinery collection without demur’. The first festival in 1981 saw artists from Brazil, Poland, Malaysia, Japan and Holland perform in venues across London, alongside British artists. The performances presented in the festival had never been seen in the UK before and were experimental and political in nature.

LIFT continued to grow as a festival and in significance with a biennial Festival programmed by Fenton and Neal from 1981-2001. During this time they brought some of the world's most important theatre-makers, found emergent artists from countries all over the globe and produced spectacular events across London with international and national artists such as Les Comedients and Christophe Berthonneau. LIFT premiered Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, experimented with the form of theatre with pieces such as the labyrinth show Oraculos and commissions such as Deborah Warner's St Pancras Project, Bobby Baker's Grown-Up School and Theatre-Rites' House. Fenton and Neal also first brought significant international theatre-makers such as Robert Lepage, Roberto Castellucci and De La Guarda to the UK for the first time.

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