Theatre has long been a space for stories, but Every Body Festival at Camden People’s Theatre dares to reimagine whose stories get told—and how. At the heart of this disabled-led celebration is Rio Matchett, whose first full programme as Artistic Director is anything but quiet. Combining political urgency with radical joy, the festival offers access not as an afterthought, but as a vibrant creative tool. We caught up with Rio to talk about programming protest, partnering with trusted voices, and turning imagination into resistance.
What inspired the creation of Every Body Festival, and why was now the right time for it to launch?
Camden People’s Theatre has always programmed political work that speaks to the moment, that’s the legacy I was honoured to inherit, and disability rights is a very live topic right now. Beyond that, I myself am disabled, and the disabled theatre community has been a huge support to me throughout my career, so it made sense to begin my programming here with a statement of intent about how I hope disabled artists and audiences can occupy this building. Since we began to plan the festival, I’m sad to say disability rights has become even more of a pressing issue, with Access to Work cuts and proposed PIP roll backs.
This is your first full programme since taking over at CPT. How does Every Body reflect your vision for the theatre’s future?
Ultimately, I want my time at CPT to be known as a time of elite quality performance. The artists and shows programmed for the festival were first and foremost selected because of my confidence in their excellence – we have some of the most exciting new voices in British Theatre. It is also something of a throwing down the gauntlet in terms of access I guess – every single show has audience access built in creatively and intelligently, we wanted to make the point that this absolutely is do-able on fringe and small scale budgets. It’s also just going to be a really fun time – I’m a big believer in joy as politics and resistance, and god knows we all need a bit of a laugh at the moment!
You’ve described the festival as both a celebration and a protest. How do you balance joy and resistance in the programming?
Originally, the programme was centred almost entirely on celebration: we’re interested in platforming disabled artists, but not necessarily in forcing them into boxes where they have to make work about the trauma of being disabled in order to get seen. But then, with the proposed government cuts, it became impossible not to build protest and debate into the programme. The artists we’ve programmed will be directly and profoundly impacted by the cuts, many of them would not have had the illustrious careers they’ve had without schemes like Access to Work providing interpreters, and so I have a very material concern about the future of our industry if these dynamic, skilled workers aren’t able to keep doing their jobs.
Access is clearly central to Every Body Festival. How did you ensure that inclusion was embedded in every stage of planning?
We consulted with the experts! There’s so much rich insight amongst the deaf and disabled creative community, so we really leaned on that. Also, I think it’s so much more creatively exciting to think about access elements like creative captioning from the beginning of a process. When used properly, access is just another creative tool in the theatre maker’s kit, and the emotional impact of the choices is so exciting for me.
From GRILLS to For A Palestinian, the programme spans urgent politics and radical joy. What do you hope audiences take away?
It’s kind of that old saying, I hope we comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. And I hope people get excited to come back and see what CPT has in store next!
You’ve partnered with FUSE, Deafinitely Theatre and Paines Plough. How did these collaborations shape the final programme?
It’s been a mixture, some of those working relationships are years old, and some and brand new. Often, they originated through the different organisations supporting and being excited about the same artists; that’s how we came to work with Paines Plough. It’s also more important than ever to do partnership working, given the financial state of the sector – we have to pool our resources. Sometimes those resources are things like the physical space we have at CPT, sometimes it’s about expertise, and sometimes it’s about trust and relationships. To my mind, there’s no better way to get deaf audiences through our doors than by partnering with Deafinitely and Fuse, who’ve collectively spent decades building trust in their audience base.
The Balancing the Books panel tackles serious policy concerns. How do you see the arts helping shift public discourse on disability rights?
I think so much of our political moment is shaped not by resource poverty, but by a poverty of imagination. It feels truly impossible sometimes to imagine a world that isn’t structured around late stage capitalism. Then also, just existing feels so hard at the moment, everyone is burned out, everyone is worried about something. I often think about engaging with the arts as a way of going to the gym for your hope muscles, your community muscles, your imagination muscles. And I think if we’re going to impact public discourse and policy, we need to be in top shape.
Finally, what legacy do you hope Every Body Festival leaves for Camden People’s Theatre and beyond?
I hope we can go on to commission and programme full performance runs of some of the work-in-progress sharings. I hope deaf and disabled artists feel that CPT is a supportive, rigorous place for them to take risks and make work. And I hope audiences – disabled and non-disabled alike – are as excited about this work as we are.
The ’Every Body’ Festival – a bold, disabled-led celebration of performance, protest and connection will run at the Camden People’s Theatre from 29th June to 13th July. For tickets and more information, visit: www.cptheatre.co.uk/festivals/EveryBody