Theatre Deli is delighted to announce our 2025 programme of residents.

Theatre Deli will support this talented cohort with space, expertise and funding to develop their work.

This year, two of our four Resident Artists were selected from applicants who live in Enfield, which has historically had less cultural investment and engagement than other London boroughs.

We have partnered with The Dugdale Arts Centre in Enfield to host work-in-progress sharings from our residency artists, after their two-week development period at Theatre Deli Leadenhall Street. Details of sharings will be found on our What's On page in due course.

She who moves everything by Rajeswari Ramaswamy	Rotten Meat – The Old Kip on Meatham Estate by Vinicius Salles
Three Black Boys Living In Zone 6 Waiting For The World To End by Joseph Junkere & Akin Wright	C*E*O C*V*N*T by Arden Fitzroy

 

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She who moves everything by Rajeswari Ramaswamy

This project explores my relationship with dance and how it connects me to an embodied understanding of the feminine as energy rather than deity. It's inspired by the Devi Mahatmyam, an ancient Sanskrit text that celebrates Shakti - the vital force that animates all life. I'm interested in how feminine energy is the pulse that makes existence alive, cyclical, and constantly transforming.

Shakti means "energy, ability, strength, power" - and in this work, it becomes both a concept and something you can actually feel moving through and as the body. The movement draws primarily from Bharatanatyam, expanding into Kalaripayattu and contemporary flow. I want audiences to watch and feel this energy made visible - fluid, fierce, alive.

The piece moves through an arc of emergence, manifestation, disruption, and return, offering an embodied experience of the feminine principle as a universal life force - something present in everyone, beyond gender or form.

I will be working on experimenting this concept on myself and a co-artist through this residency, exploring how two dancers can embody and exchange energy through contact, resistance, and rhythm, while aiming to create a full piece by the end of my residency. 

About Rajeswari

Rajeswari is a London-based Bharatanatyam dancer and educator originally from Chennai. She trained for over 15 years in classical Indian dance, beginning at Isha Samskriti, a traditional gurukulam in Coimbatore, and is currently a disciple of Shri Sheejith Krishna through the Sahrdaya Foundation in Chennai.

Her work aims to explore the intersection of classical technique and personal expression, using Bharatanatyam as a living language rather than preserved form. A recent graduate of an MSc in Psychology of the Arts from Goldsmiths University London, she currently serves as Administrator at Akademi, a leading South Asian dance organisation in the UK.

https://linktr.ee/rajeswari.dance | Instagram: @rajeswari_r99

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Rotten Meat – The Old Kip on Meatham Estate by Vinicius Salles

During this residency, I will be developing Rotten Meat, an immersive theatre piece set inside a South London council flat. The story follows three women—two Brazilian migrants and a British sex worker—whose fragile alliance unravels after a betrayal. I’ll be exploring how the audience interferes, helping to create a tense, emotionally charged experience that challenges the viewer’s role in the narrative. This marks the first practical stage of bringing the work to life.

I aim to test how far I can push immersive interactions, where the audience becomes more than a witness—perhaps even a moral participant. I’m particularly excited to explore how presence, silence, and spatial tension can be choreographed to implicate the audience in the story’s ethical dilemmas. I look forward to working closely with performers and collaborators to discover the emotional textures of this piece and refine the audience’s influence within the flat’s claustrophobic world.

About Vincius

Vincius is a Brazilian artist based in the UK, working at the intersection of physical theatre, immersive performance, and storytelling. His work explores themes of identity, displacement, and resilience, often centring marginalised voices. Vincius has developed original works and collaborated with companies such as Punchdrunk, Gecko, and Jasmin Vardimon. His practice is driven by movement, lived experience, and creating spaces that provoke both emotional and political reflection.

https://viniciussalles.co.uk/ | Instagram: @viniciussallesworks

 

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Three Black Boys Living In Zone 6 Waiting For The World To End by Joseph Junkere & Akin Wright

3 Black Boys Living in Zone 6 Waiting for the world to End is a play that’s being written by Akin Wright and directed by Joseph Junkere.

The piece will discuss the social contract being broken. We were told when we were growing up that if we worked hard, got good grades and tried our best we would be spending our 20s living it up, but it seems that was all hollow. We’re the first generation to be worse off than our parents.

Was this dream, this supposedly social contract, always there or where we lied too?

About Joseph and Akin

Joseph Junkere is a British Caribbean theatre director creating inclusive work that amplifies underrepresented voices and celebrates diverse storytelling. With nine years of professional experience, he has directed over 15 productions across London venues including Camden People’s Theatre, Barbican Theatre, The Arts Depot, and Hackney Showroom. His directing credits include “The Windrush Play Chronicles,” exploring Caribbean diaspora experiences; “I Am Not Black,” examining contemporary Black British identity; “The Freedom Play,” created with asylum seekers and refugees.

Akin Wright is a British Sierra Leonean Actor and Writer whose work focuses on the black experience from different and unique perspective's. His credits include “I Am Not Black”, which explores his experience as a black child in a predominantly white school; “Do I Raise My Hand?”, examining mental health & therapy and “Dating Whilst Black”, a piece which discusses the current dating scene that’s currently in the process of being turned into a short film.

Instagram: @akin.wright | Instagram: @josephjunkerejj

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C*E*O C*V*N*T by Arden Fitzroy

C*E*O C*V*N*T is Arden’s most evolved cyborg form. How did they get there? What does it mean to inhabit a queer and disabled body? A solo show-experiment in radical acceptance: of a body that is both fetishised and demonised, and a mind that is both praised and vilified. Inspired by research into transhumanism and sci-fi discourse, C*E*O C*V*N*T explores the pursuit of perfection through self-creation in the uncanny valley of attempted everyday existence.

About Arden

Arden Fitzroy is an actor-theatremaker, writer-poet, fight performer, facilitator, and cultural analyst from London. They are interested in the nature of spectacle, as well as exploring—and challenging—how differing perceptions of the queer and disabled body affect interpretations of performance in appearance and (literally) action. They have worked with organisations including the Old Vic, CRIPtic Arts, the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, Camden People's Theatre, the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Opera House, and have opened for Saul Williams on the Roundhouse Main Stage. They have sat on judging panels for the British Fantasy Awards and have written for film, theatre, and audio. Their poetry and essays have appeared in many anthologies and publications, online and off, and they were awarded the British Academy for Dramatic Combat’s prestigious William Hobbs Bursary in 2024. They trained at Rose Bruford College.

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