Introducing our 2026 Commons Festival Commissions
COMMONS returns to Stanley Arts from 31st of May to the 14th of June 2026 with two weeks of dance, participatory performance, conversation and collective experience.
Rooted in this year’s themes of ‘Common Ground’ and ‘Shared Experience’, the festival invites artists and audiences to gather together through performance, play, discussion and community participation.
Following our open call for new commissions, we’re excited to support three new projects by South London-based artists working across movement, theatre and live art. Each project explores, in very different ways, how performance can create spaces for connection, intimacy, memory and collective experience.
We’re delighted to announce the commissioned artists for Commons Festival 2026:
By Portia Yuran Li
The picnic is a new movement and physical theatre performance created by a South London-based ensemble of East Asian migrant, Italian and queer-led artists.
Exploring ideas of common ground through the recurring image of a picnic on the same patch of grass across different stages of life, the work follows changing relationships, social rituals and shared memories unfolding within a single public space.
From childhood games on an open lawn to gatherings marked by intimacy, celebration and family, The picnic reflects on how communities return to shared spaces over time, and the traces people leave behind when they do.
The picnic places audiences and performers together within a shared performance environment, inviting reflection on public space, belonging and collective experience.
“The grass never changes. The people do.”
By Carla Ng, James Dolan, Jessica Panchi Pacheco, Domna Solea, Shea Sullivan and Atlas Wu
Hug is a participatory performance for a group of strangers exploring intimacy, connection and collective experience.
Inviting audiences into a shared dance that moves from the Big Bang to the world’s largest hug ceremony, and eventually to the end of the universe. The work is at once silly and sincere, theatrical and deeply intimate.
Created by a South London-based ensemble of trans and queer artists, HUG PIECE places participation and human connection at the centre of the performance experience, asking what happens when strangers gather together and choose to share space, movement and vulnerability.
Hug will also invite local communities into the development process through shared encounters, conversation and collective participation.
By Jen Malarkey of Encounter Productions
ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING is a multi-generational dance theatre project exploring identity, selfhood and the roles we perform throughout our lives.
Created with children and young people from Croydon, the performance will use costumes, wigs and the iconic figure of Elvis Presley to explore how young people imagine themselves, their futures and the expectations placed upon them.
As a cast of 8-14-year-olds transform before the audience’s eyes, the work moves between humour, playfulness and tenderness, asking questions about family, belonging, legacy and what we pass on to future generations.
Throughout the performance, the shifting relationship between the young cast and an aging Elvis becomes a reflection on care, intergenerational connection and the fragile nature of identity itself.
ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING places collaboration, participation and youth voice at the centre of the creative process.
Full programme details HERE
