Rude Health Festival Brings Performance, Film and Dance

Artist-led community charity The Tute presents its most ambitious season yet with the return of Rude Health Festival, offering a wealth of world-class, anarchic and daring performances addressing the community’s needs. Running from October to December 2025, the festival platform’s themes of health, belonging, womanhood, grief, and care. Explored through a rich season of dance, theatre, film and visual art, Rude Health Festival is staged entirely from one of the most unexpected artistic epicentres in the UK: a repurposed miners’ welfare institute in a newly ‘Reform’ parish council ward in Cambois, Southeast Northumberland.

Following the success of last year’s inaugural edition, the 2025 programme raises the bar with a vibrant line-up. This line-up includes winner of the Bonnie Bird Choreography Award and Total Theatre Award at Edinburgh Festival 2017, Liz Aggiss, Alistair McDowall (The Glow Royal Court; Pomona National Theatre), Yuvel Soria (Ballet Folclórico Municipal Cochabamba,  Dance City Newcastle), Alex Oates (NT Peter Schaffer commission and RSC 37 plays winner), Lucy Suggate (Tender Stones FABRIC; Dancing Museums National Gallery), and the winner of Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 Charlie Ford.

Joint Artistic Director Esther Huss comments, We’ve really carefully considered the needs of our community and put together a programme that we feel is relevant and meaningful to our neighbours, to explore the challenges that are affecting their well-being, choices and sense of identity, and we’ve curated a set of projects that respond with care and imagination.

It’s incredibly humbling that artists we’ve long admired, like Liz Aggiss and Alistair MacDowall, want to support that vision. There’s a sense that something special is happening here in Cambois.

Joint Artistic Director Alex Oates adds, We’re proving that tackling public health issues and creating community impact doesn’t mean compromising on artistic ambition. Our audience deserve the same calibre of work you’d see in London or Edinburgh, and we’re bringing it here!

This season brings together bold new performances, reimagined community projects, and unforgettable stories told through dance, theatre, film, and celebration.

Kicking off this year’s Festival will be a magical multicultural live performance honouring the traditional Day of the Dead celebrations in Bolivia. AJAYU Transitorio (3rd October) by British-Bolivian dance artist Yuvel Soria presents a ritualistic experience blending Bolivian, Kuchipudi, Afro-Diaspora and contemporary dance with poetry and live percussion. AJAYU explores food, death, and remembrance in a sensory, celebratory performance, culminating in a communal meal and storytelling circle.

A few weeks after Halloween, Hexed! (15th November) by Lucy Suggate and Charlie Ford offers a performance gathering that considers what it means to feel cursed, and how such burdens might be lifted. Drawing inspiration from the Women of the North report, the artists examine inequalities faced by women in the region. The work created alongside community groups, during the week prior, directly informs the performance.

Womanhood continues to be explored throughout Rude Health Festival. Women, Dance & the Sea (28th November) is a curated film night featuring short works by some of the UK’s most influential female dance and filmmakers Jacky Lansley, Rosemary Lee, Liz Aggiss and Esther Huss. Together, the films reflect on the sea, the coast and the human stories that unfold alongside them. From a collaborative film night to a fiercely funny, poignant and subversive solo, Crone Alone (29th November) by Liz Aggiss sees the grand dame of anarchic dance return.  This show will be the first after several years of not performing, and a powerful return from this iconic force of the arts. Exploring aging, value and performance itself, this piece presents clipped dances, poetic outbursts, and one unforgettable crone.

For a family-friendly musical adventure, look no further than Here Be Dragons (4th October) by Unfolding Theatre, written by Lindsay Rodden and directed by Annie Rigby. Join a band of dreamers and explorers on a magical journey across the Northeast. A show for anyone who’s ever wanted to fly away or find their way home.

Stronger Shores Exhibition (1st  – 2nd November) shares work developed in partnership with Stronger Shores to explore the coastline and its effect on our health and wellbeing. Poet Linda France has collaborated with the Tute’s writing group to create poetry inspired by the ecological marvels of our shores, while dance artist Esther Huss has worked with The Tute troupe dance group on a new short film. The exhibition also includes work done with Cambois Primary School and a striking installation featuring a book made from kelp.

Alongside the exhibition, audiences can experience new and daring theatre inspired by life on the coast. all of it (21st November – title styled lower case) by Alistair McDowall is a staged reading of an exhilarating solo play that captures the entirety of one woman’s life in 45 breathless minutes, followed by a Q&A with the playwright.

This year’s festival also sees the return of Cambois Hidden Depths Revisited (12th October), a celebration and continuation of 2024’s historic street theatre event. Previously attended by over 300 people, this iteration includes live performances from actors Christopher Connell and Lucy Elizabeth Davis, a premiere of a new dance film by Esther Huss and Meerkat Films, and panel discussions in partnership with Novo Theatre.

And finally, the programme culminates in From the Sea (5th December), a new work-in-progress by Alex Oates, co-created with people with lived experience of seeking asylum, care, and coastal life. The play follows Marjorie, a wildlife volunteer who finds more than just seals washed up on her local beach. Directed by Amy Golding and supported by immigration experts, the performance will be followed by a post-show panel discussion on its themes.

Alongside performances, Rude Health 2025 deepens The Tute’s community and school programmes. Projects include Write Now a creative writing initiative at Bedlington Academy led by Hilary Elder; Be Moved, early-years dance sessions with Skye Reynolds; and Twinkle Arti, a touring suitcase show, adapted by playwright Danielle Slade, to support children impacted by parental mental health and substance abuse.

Rude Health Festival is funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, with the North East Combined Authority as Lead Authority, and supported by QTS.

Main Image: AJAYU, credit Elly Wellford

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