Interview: Voidspace's Katy Naylor on Voidspace Live 2025

Voidspace Live, the two-day festival focusing on interactive arts, installations and exhibits, returns to Theatre Deli near Liverpool Street in June following a sold-out 2024 edition. Taking over the venue across the weekend of 7th and 8th June, Voidspace Live 2025 will feature over 30 shows (including four LARPs, three one-on-one shows, one self-guided audio piece and two Jubensha games), over a dozen installations and four workshops. It's also been confirmed that 15 pieces of work will have their public premiere as part of Voidspace Live.

Ahead of the festival's return, we sat down with Katy Naylor, the founder of Voidspace, to discuss how Voidspace first came to be, the success of last year's Voidspace Live, and what to expect from the 2025 edition of the festival.

Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson

Immersive Rumours: Hi Katy, thanks for speaking with us today. Do you mind introducing yourself and telling us what Voidspace is all about?

Katy Naylor: My name is Katy Naylor; I am the Void in Chief of Voidspace, an arts organisation that platforms interactive art of all kinds. Anything from interactive theatre, dance, and opera to interactive writing and interactive fiction that has an art quality to it, with which the audience can either directly engage with or be incorporated into, we're interested in.

IR: Can you tell us a bit about the main goals of Voidspace and where it sits within the interactive world?

Katy: I would say there are three goals. One is to make space for people who want to create interactive writing or performance to make that work. Encouraging people who don't currently do that sort of work is really important to me because of how I started. I came from the self-published indie lit mag world, where the ethos is very much ‘everyone should have access to creativity’.

In addition to that, it's about fostering a space for people to be able to showcase their work professionally. That encompasses opportunities to perform and get paid for it, but also providing the opportunities to playtest work, to develop new work and to do R&D. In interactive performance, playtesting is really important because you can't tell how your piece is going to land until you get it in front of an audience.

The third of our goals is more of a communication piece: getting the message across to audiences, critics, and academics that all of these art forms, which are generally thought of as very disparate, have this core of connectivity, co-creation, and engagement in common. I'm very invested in showing the world that the elements of audience engagement, participation and interaction are something that deserves as much scrutiny, discussion and attention as the environmental and sensory elements of immersion that academia has often focused on.

IR: Where did your passion for this first come from?

Katy: I became interested in doing this just through being a massive nerd, basically. I’ve been really interested in immersive and interactive theatre for about 12 years, and one of the big drivers for that was a particular time around 2015, when I was seeing everything I could that had the immersive and later interactive labels attached to it.

I saw a lot of shows, and my friends and I had this word-of-mouth network of ‘If you like this sort of thing, you'll love this one,’ and the idea that it's unfair that only the people with access to those word-of-mouth networks should be able to benefit from that made me want to regularise it.

Nowadays, I do a monthly newsletter, Voidspace Dispatches, which has listings of immersive and interactive work of different sorts, but I also realised, due to being extremely nerdy and possibly because I'm just the kind of person that likes to really think about, analyse, and pick apart how different mechanics and different shows engage you in different ways, I'd built up this store of knowledge and expertise that just lives in my head, which is great for me because it means I've got loads of stuff to talk about, but in terms of broadening the conversation, it doesn't go very far. So what I want to do is share that information and experience about interactive creators’ practice and ideas about interactivity and expand that conversation.

Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson

IR: You’ve got a book series coming out later in the year that compiles a lot of the interviews you’ve done over the years with creators, right?

Katy: Yeah. The anthology I've published is called Voidspace in Conversation. It's not all of the collected interviews, to be clear, because in the end it would have come to over a thousand pages, but it's a mixture of selected interviews and submitted essays from various creators.

For instance, Chloe Mashiter wrote a piece about the difficulties of branching narrative, and it's structured as a choose-your-own-adventure essay. It’s a perfect instance of form and content coming together. There’s a philosophical piece about the concept of ‘art play’; there are some pieces about people's personal experiences of their own creative journeys with interactive writing in particular; and there's a couple of my essays in there. One is on The Manikins: a work in progress that I originally wrote as an introduction to a limited edition, supporter-only edition of the show's playtext. The aim of all of it is to broaden the conversation.

A lot of what I’ve done with Voidspace has basically been out of spite because I've had a point that I've wanted to make, an irritation, and the only way that I can stem that irritation is to do something about it. One of my points of irritation is about the academic discourse in relation to immersive and interactive theatre. It's great what's out there – Punchdrunk in particular gets a lot of attention; some other companies as well, like Shunt, which is an incredible pre-Punchdrunk company, get attention too – but I wanted to see more work from a practitioner point of view that really delves into the nuts and bolts of interaction particularly, because the key in an interactive, immersive show is good audience-centred dramaturgy.

Good structure, good world-building, and a solid role for the audience within the world of the show that's been properly thought out and implemented – if you get those things right, like the original version of Bridge Command, Emily Cardings’ interactive Shakespeare work like Richard III and The Manikins: a work in progress have, then you can create true immersion with no money and no set if you stick to those principles like these shows do. And if you deviate from those principles, all the budget in the world is unlikely to help you really effectively connect with your audience.

IR: 2025 has been a very busy year for the void, with a number of scratch nights, workshops and other events in the run-up to Voidspace Live, which takes place in June. Can you walk us through what you’ve already done this year?

Katy: I’ve been telling people that I've been both juggling and spinning plates. Somewhere down the line, that's turned into me juggling plates. I think that's pretty much how it feels at the moment. The plates are in the air; they may well smash any minute, but I’m keeping going.

After last year’s festival, we started to think about how to potentially fund this year's edition. One of the things we did was apply for Arts Council funding. We didn't get any money, but by taking on their feedback, we’ve got a better project out of it.

The first round of feedback we got from ACE said that they wanted to see more of a pipeline and more of a legacy than just a one-off festival. So far this year, we’ve put on creator meetups and had a scratch night, as well as run online events, workshops and games nights, which have been really fun. We also applied for a micro-grant from the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation to deliver three workshops introducing people to different forms of interactive writing creation software. Interactive fiction is so close to my heart because that's what the Voidspace was originally about – getting interactive fiction into publishing spaces – when I started the zine back in 2021.

After the festival, we’ve got a few nights at COLAB Tower in July, which will be filled with void things, so watch this space. There’s also an online festival we’re planning on doing, giving people access to the world of online interactive art. In short, we've been busy..

IR: And how have you managed to keep all these plates in the air?

Katy: It's really down to the incredible support that I've had from our programme partner, Theatre Deli; my co-producer Rebecca Hampson; venues and folks like Side/Step (who let us do an event at their super cool festival in February) and COLAB; and from a lot of people who have volunteered and given their time to help out. I definitely couldn't do it alone.

Shout out to the regular voidunteers: Artemis Redican and Andrew Harrowell, who work on transcripts of interviews for me; Hazel Dixon, who helps me put together listings; Rudy Johnson, who does website stuff; and Neil Willcox, who brought the whole Voidspace in Conversation anthology to life. I didn't realise it was going to come to 800 pages; I didn't think that we were going to fully index it, and it became obvious that it was a really good idea, and Neil took all of it in his stride and has created a masterpiece, so he's my co-editor on that and well deserving of the title.

There are also a bunch of people who are helping out with organising the festival – Rebecca Hampson, TJ Wiswell, Vicky Back, Jet Velinga, and a whole load of friends of the Void who will be acting as volunteer stewards on the day. No one is truly alone in the Voidspace, and I really appreciate the way that the community has come together to make this thing - which, without funding or staff, should be impossible - happen.

Voidspace Live 2024. Photos: James Lawson

IR: Let’s rewind to 2024, with the first Voidspace Live. How was it putting that event together?

Katy: If I'd known what running a festival would entail, I would never have done something as foolhardy as starting it. I had the idea in December 2023 that the way to finally prove my point – that all of these art forms belonged under one umbrella – is to literally put a bunch of them under one roof on a single day and just show people and force them to recognise it.

I realised it had to be a one-day or a two-day festival because if you do it over a fortnight, it's much easier, but the theatre people will go to the theatre, the dance people will go to the dance, and the poetry people will go to the poetry. The whole point of Voidspace Live is to get people in on a single ticket, and, knowing that they've got a choice, they're going to get to take part in shows and a couple of creative workshops. What we hoped is that it would inspire people to take a bit of a risk, try things that they maybe wouldn't normally try, and just discover all of the incredible stuff out there.

The atmosphere on the day was exactly what I’d hoped it would be. This is going to sound a bit weird, but it felt almost like a wedding, but without anyone getting married, you know? You know when you go to a really good wedding and you've got people who are friends from different eras of your life that don't know each other, but they're all making conversation and chatting and finding out what they have in common? It was kind of like that. For me, in immersive and interactive, that is as important a part of the experience as the show itself. The fact that whatever it is about, people feel compelled to share their experiences afterwards.

As an aside, I spoke to John Krizac, the writer of Tamara, who did Punchdrunk 20 years before Punchdrunk. In the 80s he did a show which was a ‘follow a character around a mansion’ show. Even then, pre-internet, fans were coming back and meeting each other, having dinner, and swapping phone numbers. Before the social media age, that urge to connect outside of just the show itself was still really strong.

What was great to discover was that the Voidspace had actually become embodied. I always imagine the Voidspace is kind of like a slightly haunted attic. It's very dark and it's very warm; there are ghosts and voices in the walls, but they're kind of friendly. It’s homely, but somehow it's also big enough to welcome everyone. You might feel a little bit like you don't quite know what to expect, but you always feel welcome, and you always feel safe, and you always feel at home. That's probably what underpins the Voidspace ethos in terms of the community space that I want to create, and it was incredible last year to feel that exact energy come into being on the day.

Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson

IR: For 2025, the festival is expanding to be a two-day event. What spurred on that idea?

Katy: The idea originally came from David Ralf at Theatre Deli during a post-festival debrief. The festival went so well; it had sold out and ended up having quite a long waiting list (Buy tickets not to avoid disappointment!). Everyone had such a great time, and from a technical side, Theatre Deli really enjoyed being part of helping to create it. Shoutout to Aneirin Evans, who is Theatre Deli's venue manager and is an absolutely invaluable source of support on the day and has been really involved this year. David said, ‘Well, look, why don't we do it for two days? You can have Deli for the weekend; let's fill every room with interactive stuff. ‘Let’s make it really great,’ and I said, ‘Why not?!’.

For 2025, we did an open call to see what was out there, and the response was tremendous. We had well over 100 applications, including ones from big names at Secret Cinema, Bridge Command, and Deadweight. They're all coming to the festival to share brand new, groundbreaking, exciting work for the first time. We’re giving those big names space, but equally exciting, a huge volume of applications were from people I’ve never heard of. This isn't to be arrogant, but I'm somebody who has seen a lot of shows, who talks to a lot of people, who prides herself on keeping up to date with what I think of as the scene, and to discover that I was right and that there was a huge wealth of incredible stuff out there that was just waiting to find its home and its audience has just been the most exciting thing. I'm so looking forward to presenting the work of those artists to our community for the first time.

Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson

IR: What are some of the top-line statistics on what’s coming to the festival this year?

Katy: For Voidspace Live 2025, we’ve got over 30 shows. 15 of which are premiering for the very first time. There are party shows from the likes of Mind Control Disco, and we’ve got Uncle Barry's Birthday Party, which was my favourite thing from Side/Step Festival. We also have five or six shows that involve demons or the supernatural in some way. Apparently, we like it weird in the Voidspace, but I'm cool with that…

There are four workshops, one self-guided audio piece and a couple of other self-guided installation pieces; there's a poem that takes up a whole room; there's a pervasive game, The Stolen Child, which a dozen people can play across the whole festival, and many more can join in with.

We've also got four or five LARPs. There's a new form of interactive entertainment called Jubensha, which is huge in China. It's a mixture of murder mystery, role-playing, and deduction theatre. It's apparently one of the most popular forms of entertainment, full stop, in China at the moment, but it's not really known as yet in the West. However, at Voidspace Live, we have not one but two Jubensha being debuted by people who really know their stuff. We've got one - Spy of the Year Award – from the Bridge Command/Jury Games/Parabolic team – Chloe Mashiter, Tom Black, Hannah Cox Davies, and Arlo Howard. The other is from Dean Rogers, who, back in the day, made Heist, which was an incredible piece of work. He’s now Creative Director at Secret Cinema and is coming to try out his new Jubensha, The Crow Club.

We've got zine making; we've got a five-room exhibition of fully playable art, including a game that's set on a boat in the underworld that you control with a rudder, an espionage game that you play using a rice cooker, and an arcade machine that fights back. There's a jigsaw, there's a playable piece of furniture, and at least two solo or 1:1 experiences that you won't have to book for; you'll be able to just drop in when you're between shows.

One thing we learnt from 2024 is that people just didn't have the time over a quite truncated single day to see everything they wanted to see, so that was one big reason for expanding it to a weekend, to give people the time to really engage with all this cool stuff.

IR: There’s a huge range of shows being performed across both days. Are there any hidden gems you could highlight? What’s the maddest, most out-there concept on offer this year?

Katy: I think my favourite, most bonkers thing on the programme is Save the Raccoon by Yudi Wu, in which you’re a raccoon in a skip, making trash art for a competition along the lines of an Arts Council or a creative visa application. It’s absurd, it's satirical, and you get to be a raccoon making trash art! How cool is that?!

Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson

IR: There’s also a handful of tentpole shows that were announced earlier in the year too, right?

Katy: Yeah. We have a reworking of Faust from Seth Kriebel, Hamlet: An Experience from Emily Carding, and Jury Games, who have been huge supporters of Voidspace Live and did a show at last year's festival that was massively oversubscribed; they’re going to do all of their shows throughout the festival. Unwired Dance Theatre is doing Where We Meet, and the biggest wild card of them all is Deadweight Theatre. The work they're going to share is such a closely guarded secret that even I don't know what it's going to entail. That's going to be the biggest locked box surprise, even for me, which is very exciting.

IR: It’s worth noting that you’ve put a lot of work into making sure the festival is as inclusive as possible, right?

Katy: Yeah. One of the brilliant things about Theatre Deli and something that's very important to me is access and inclusivity. For our trans siblings, you're not going to have to worry about access to facilities, and if people have specific needs, we will do what we can to accommodate them.

Deli also has a really lovely calm room. For people who are neurodiverse, like myself, being on the AuDHD spectrum, sometimes overwhelm is real, and you just need some quiet, a weighted blanket and some nice soothing lighting. Deli are really good at making provisions for that. Even though there's a lot at the festival and it can be quite overwhelming, we are going to do everything we can to keep you happy and comfortable.

In terms of access inclusivity, something we learnt last year is that to some people, knowing more about a show and about the levels and types of interaction is an access need. There are ways of making that information available to people who need to know what to expect.

Even though the festival has grown, I pride myself on retaining a very personal approach. My email address is voidspacezine@gmail.com, and if there's anyone out there who is thinking about buying a ticket but isn't quite sure or has any specific concerns about it, please reach out because it's really important to me to make both artists and participants feel as welcome and happy as possible. Concessions are for anyone who genuinely can't afford a full-price ticket. It's an honour system; we’re not going to ask questions or ask you to prove it. If that difference is what will get you in, then please come on a concession.

We may not have much of a budget to provide the full access offering we would like, but we want to do what we can to welcome people and make everybody feel safe.

IR: With such a wide-ranging line-up and some fairly well-known names from within the immersive/interactive world presenting work, it seems like a great opportunity for those attending to see some new work that might be the show we’re all talking about in 2026.

Katy: Yeah. To have really established people from the likes of Bridge Command, Jury Games, The Key of Dreams and Deadweight come in and give the first sharings of new work is very exciting. Any one of these things could be the next massive show in the scene, and you'll be able to say that you were the first crowd to see that show being brought to life.

Equally exciting, I think, is the number of people who, from our London immersive bubble perspective, are a completely new entrance to this scene as well. The people behind Uncle Barry’s Birthday Party, they're still students at Central. To have made something of that quality before they've even graduated, I think they’re going to be the ones to watch. Only Exit is another emerging artist show ; a really interesting experimental piece where you explore and play with space and directions. It’s the kind of concept I don't think has ever been shown before.

There’s also Continuum, which is a show that’s going to last like nine hours. Any one of these things could be the thing that is maybe next year's big show or, almost equally exciting, the crazy happening that maybe 20 people see, and those people are going to carry that experience in their hearts forever. It's going to be their gift and their memory.

Voidspace Live 2024. Photo: James Lawson

IR: Finally, what do you hope people will come away from Voidspace Live feeling?

Katy: When we’re all in our 70s or 80s, sitting on our armchairs on our verandas, or in our holodecks or whatever it is that people are going to be doing by the time we get to that age, we’ll be sitting there and reminiscing about the shows that had the deepest impact on us and the experiences that have stayed with us.

Knowing that there will be people out there who say, ‘Do you remember we got to see the first showing of Spy of the Year?’ or ‘Do you remember that raccoon show? That was crazy. The fact that those memories and those stories are going to be created makes me so proud and happy.

To be part of something that will be talked about and reminisced about for years to come, and as with all live theatre and particularly with all immersive and interactive experiences, knowing that in that moment, by getting your ticket and being there, you are witnessing and helping to create something – that is truly special and unrepeatable.

Read more about Voidspace Live 2025's line-up

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Voidspace Live runs at Theatre Deli near Liverpool Street/Aldgate on the 7th and 8th June 2025. Tickets for each day are priced at £55.00. To book and find out more info, visit voidspacezine.com