Review: Voidspace Live 2026 at Theatre Deli

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

Voidspace Live - the UK's leading interactive arts festival - recently returned for its third edition, taking over Aldgate's Theatre Deli for the weekend of 6th and 7th June. As ever, the two-day event presented a huge variety of interactive work, filling every corner of the venue with so many playable art pieces, interactive and immersive shows, live-action games and installations that any write-up of the festival could only hope to capture a small percentage of everything that went on...

With a stacked line-up of 30+ shows, including exciting work-in-progress pieces from the likes of Yannick Trapman-O’Brien (Undersigned) and John Robertson (The Dark Room); standout work that has appeared elsewhere in London over the past twelve months, including Aaron Oliver's What We Must, TomYumSim's Trainwreck, and Hakan Akgül and Joe Stepney's You Are The Lamb; and dozens of shows that debuted publicly for the first time at Voidspace Live, deciding what to book into across the festival's six performance sessions was far from an easy choice.

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

In addition to the core line-up of scheduled shows, the festival also featured a further 30 pieces of playable art, interactive games and durational performances, making any attempt to check out everything the festival had that much harder, but wonderfully rewarding. While many of them were available throughout the weekend, several of the more popular experiences on offer required prior sign-up, with the time slots available in between scheduled shows filling up well ahead of time.

The festival's curated line-up of work meant that regardless of whether attendees found themselves traversing a post-apocalyptic city, becoming hostage negotiators or working a trial shift at a coffee shop run by a puppet, the festival's unifying rule - that the audience always have a role to play and are a meaningful part of the experience - was present in every piece, and the quality of work on display was consistently high.

Alongside all of the interactive work available, Theatre Deli's bar was a hub of activity throughout, playing host to day-long sessions of Bound Allegiance, a faction-based game that takes place between main show sessions and has those taking part vying to make sure their bloc is dominant, as well as countless conversations between audience members and creators. It had a constant buzz about it, with attendees swapping notes about shows they'd just seen and generally geeking out about all things interactive - something that’s often confined to industry events.

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

Year on year, the scale of Voidspace Live has grown, with each new edition increasing in scope. What started as a one-day event in 2024 grew to a weekend-long festival in 2025, and the 2026 edition continued to offer more than ever before, with a huge increase in the amount of work included.

As part of this continued growth, Voidspace Live 2025 saw several improvements over the 2025 iteration of the festival, most notably with the festival's booking process, which has done away with a ranked preference list and instead transitioned into giving attendees the freedom to book into whichever shows they like ahead of the festival - a welcome improvement that afforded those who went more freedom to plan out their time as they saw fit.

The 2026 edition of Voidspace Live also saw the introduction of a new, accessible ticket type - Voidspace Lite - which gave attendees access to the festival's line-up of durational pieces, playable art and games alongside standby tickets to scheduled shows that weren't at capacity. Priced at just £15 per day, they were an undeniably great deal and ideal for those either looking to dip their toe into the festival for the first time or happy to leave the specifics of which shows they saw down to chance.

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

With such a huge concentration of immersive and interactive work all under one roof for the weekend, the festival has firmly cemented its reputation as London's annual mecca for interactive art. For many of this year's attendees, it was already an essential date in the diary, but for the wider immersive and interactive industries, Voidspace Live serves as a vital showcase of what makes the UK's scene so exciting, especially in the wake of similar festivals - namely VAULT Festival - having wound down for good.

Simply put: It's the highlight of the UK’s interactive art calendar and, for one brief weekend a year, the best place in the world to experience interactive work of all shapes and sizes.

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With the caveat that a good amount of work presented at Voidspace Live was either debuting for the first time or still being developed, here are some quick-fire, non-starred thoughts on some of what we saw across our two days at Theatre Deli...

My Date with Pierce Brosnan by Alistair Aitcheson

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

Alistair Aitcheson's solo clown show sees their alter ego, Mademoiselle Cafetière, searching for love in the most unlikely of places - a café in the sky populated by avian customers. At least, that's where the audience at Voidspace decided to set this performance of the show, which places Cafetière opposite a human-shaped pillowcase with a printed photo of the one-time James Bond stuck on.

At regular intervals throughout the piece, the audience is given the freedom to dictate how things unfold by inputting their suggestions, answers and dialogue through a custom-built webpage. As you'd expect, the audience doesn't exactly make it easy for Aitcheson to keep things moving along, with countless left-field suggestions being offered up across the show's four acts.

Regardless of whether it's requesting a shoe to be delivered to their table or adding useful information like 'No longer has crabs' to their dating profile, Aitcheson takes all of it in their stride, bending over backwards to meet their requests. They show real commitment to the bit as things escalate further in the show's third act, when the lifeless Pierce Brosnan is imbued with life through a text-to-speech system.

Trainwreck by TomYumSim

The immersive theatre industry was dragged over the coals back in February 2024 when a short-lived immersive experience based on Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory debuted in Glasgow and was rightly met with widespread ridicule from all corners of the globe. Several years earlier, the disastrous Fyre Festival also drew similar feedback as the world watched the drama unfold in real time, spawning a million memes and several high-profile documentaries recounting how it went up in flames.

These two incidents serve as the inspiration for TomYumSim's Trainwreck, a satirical and chaotic immersive experience that explores what happens when you outsource creativity and decision-making to AI and the hyperbolic marketing tactics that lead to experiences overpromising and underdelivering.

Trainwreck's storyline (a loose term, given the countless disparate paths audiences go down throughout the show) revolves around audiences boarding a 'train' to an unknown destination. The route has been planned by Tom, an AI travel co-ordinator, but the train's hosts - Simone and Sven - handle all of the on-the-ground logistics, deferring to Tom for any major decisions and bending to his will.

Whether that's through performing a one-act play with audience members that was 𝚐̶𝚎̶𝚗̶𝚎̶𝚛̶𝚊̶𝚝̶𝚎̶𝚍̶ written moments earlier, walking a troupe of audience members through delivering a baby, or leading an investigation into a Murder on the Orient Express-style slaying, the deliberately shambolic nature of Trainwreck means that it's a hugely enjoyable experience that's impossible to adequately explain to anyone who wasn't also onboard.

You Are Pagliacci: Sad Clown Simulator by John Robertson

John Robertson is best known for The Dark Room, a long-running text-based choose-your-own-adventure, in which audience members pick from one of four options and attempt to escape a pitch-black room full of deathtraps. The show has seen enormous success since it was first created 14 years ago, with performances at Glastonbury, Edinburgh Fringe and dozens more similarly impressive spots.

For Voidspace Live, Robertson debuted an early version of a new game - You Are Pagliacci: Sad Clown Simulator - which saw audiences step into the oversized clown shoes of Pagliacci, a depressed clown who's desperately seeking a doctor's appointment.

Structurally, You Are.. is near identical to The Dark Room, with four choices to be made at every turn, but the branching narrative that unfurls itself as each new player takes on the task of trying to secure an appointment is undoubtedly impressive, and the chance to see one of Robertson's games slowly develop the kind of in-jokes, lore and call-outs that have long been part of The Dark Room is hugely exciting.

Yours Truly by UNCLE BARRY

UNCLE BARRY's latest piece, Yours Truly, explores the power dynamics present in both romantic relationships and participatory theatre, while asking how we care for one another. Written and performed by Mia Foster, the show invites a single audience member on stage for the duration of the show to play an unnamed student who begins a relationship with their teacher, portrayed by Foster.

Over the course of an hour, the ups and downs of the relationship unfold primarily through a series of heartfelt letters, which are read out by both of the on-stage performers and select audience members who pluck them off a fishing rod that floats over those watching on. Alongside these confessional letters are several scenes showing the awkward small talk, first sparks of connection and moments of vulnerability that come as you open your heart up to someone new, all of which are handled with a tremendous amount of care towards the show's recruited participant.

As an examination of how we care for each other, even under difficult or strange circumstances, Yours Truly delivers a heartfelt and emotionally-charged case for opening our hearts to each other, and is another excellent addition to UNCLE BARRY's rapidly-growing body of work.

Timonopoly by Brite Theater

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

Following on from Richard III (a one-person show) and Hamlet (an experience) being presented at the two previous editions of Voidspace Live, Emily Carding returns with Timonopoly, the final part of Brite Theater's Coward Conscience Trilogy.

Taking inspiration from Timon of Athens - one of Shakespeare's lesser-known works - this hour-long show sees Emily Carding play Fortune, and takes the audience through a rigged Monopoly-like game. With one audience member cast as Timon, and several more as their sycophantic hangers-on, the game has players rolling a dice and seeing whether Fortune will favour them.

With each passing term, Timon's wealth is siphoned off, and before long, they find themselves with nothing left. Thanks to some clever sleight of hand from Carding, the outcome of the game is all but guaranteed, and the game's final act delivers a damning indictment of how widespread poverty and homelessness are in the UK, linking the play's original themes to the state of the world today, and directly to those in the room.

Everyone Dreams of Burning Alive by TheMissingTheatre

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

TheMissingTheatre's durational piece Everyone Dreams of Burning Alive took place on both days of Voidspace Live, with each performance lasting over 4 hours. The work focuses on a test subject, portrayed by Jack St Leger, who is confined within a small square marked out on the floor. Across from them is a second taped-off area, which one audience member can enter at a time. When within the square, they're encouraged to answer on-screen questions such as 'What are you most afraid of?' into a microphone, and interact with the test subject from afar. Their recorded answers become part of the piece and are played back at random intervals, and their movements when inside the square are mirrored and repeated by the test subject.

With the audience free to come and go as they please, each visit to Everyone Dreams.. across the piece's four- hour-plus runtime will show a different stage in the subject's development. During our early drop-ins, we saw the test subject awkwardly struggling to interpret the looped audio recordings, and their attempts to mirror the movements of those inside the square opposite came with a noticeable delay, as if each action had to be processed before it could be performed. As the hours passed, the test subjects' movements were more fluid, their speech more coherent, and their understanding of those opposite them was more sophisticated.

For us, the most interesting element of Everyone Dreams.. was seeing how audience behaviours evolved alongside the subjects. Early interactions were generally cautious, with participants being unsure how to engage and wary of pushing things too far, but with time, as people grew to have a better understanding of how the subject responded to their actions, participants would be more confrontational, attempting to confuse or upset the test subject, causing them to retreat into themselves.

An ambitious and unsettling piece, Everyone Dreaming.. was massively rewarding to those who gave it repeat visits, and its durational format allows for a wide range of behaviours to emerge organically, both from audiences and the test subject. It was one of the standout pieces from Voidspace Live 2026.

Overbrewed! by DreamCat

Photo: Dhiamara Coulson / Unseelie Images

Taking a healthy dose of inspiration from the Overcooked series, Dreamcat's real-life game prototype has groups of up to five people working a trial shift at a coffee shop run by Tony, a sentient sock puppet. As they battle an ever-growing list of orders, the baristas in training have to sprint from station to station to prep and grind the beans; brew the drinks; add milk, toppings, and syrups; and deliver the drinks to the counter against the clock. Additional levels of complexity are introduced with each round, as the orders get more complex, and a virus in the cafe's system needs to be purged through a physical floppy disk.

While there's no actual coffee being made, with each step of the process instead being recorded on NFC tags stuck to the bottom of each cup, the amount of effort put into the order by teams is pretty substantial, and the ever-increasing complexity of orders ensures that teams are never resting on their laurels. Needless to say, given the game's similarity to a hugely popular series of video games, it's a heap of fun, even when you mess up orders or have zero clue about what needs doing, and we can't wait to see how it develops from here.

[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]

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Voidspace Live 2026 ran at Theatre Deli on the 6th and 7th June 2026. For more information about Voidspace, and to stay up to date with future events, you can follow them on Instagram at @_voidspace_zine or visit voidspacezine.com