A HOST of colourful, creative, and flamboyant street theatre acts are set to light up the Bradford Festival this month.

Award-winning British acts will perform alongside local artists at the free festival, which attracted more than 150,000 people to the city centre last year.

In one of the highlights, festival goers will see the innovative British street theatre company, Acrojou, perform their flagship acrobatics show ‘The Wheel House’, with audiences following the story as it rolls around City Park on a specially-designed tubular set.

The Bradford-based company, Irregular Arts, will stage ‘Ruby Slipper Slide’, a Wizard of Oz-inspired interactive act which encourages people to take a ride on a giant slipper-shaped slide and meet ‘Glinda the Good Witch'.

The performance will give people a taste of ‘Echoes Of Oz’, a large-scale project planned for the Bradford Shine festival which takes place in City Park in October.

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Visitors will also see the artfully choreographed ‘Little Box of Horrors’ - by the Chichester-based Bootworks Theatre Company – in which one person sits inside a darkened booth and experiences a scary performance while outside, the audience watches as the performers act their parts.

The Bradford Playhouse will stage the premiere of ‘Alien Invasion’, an interactive piece created specifically for the Bradford Festival and City Park.

A large space ship is set to crash-land in City Park's mirror pool, with the survival of the entire planet relying on the audience, who are encouraged to repel the aqua-phobic space people by pelting them with water-soaked sponges.

Madcap British duo, Plunge Boom, are set to perform their comical street act, ‘Vegetable Nannies’, in which they stroll around City Park with ancient Victorian prams, showing off their allotment-grown ‘babies’.

Wet Picnic will use an elegant elevator to perform their slapstick acrobatics in ‘The Lift’.

The audience will be invited to step inside and choose a moment by selecting one of nine different floors, with each floor triggering a particular scene or event which will then be instantly performed for both the person in ‘The Lift’ and those on the outside.

Bradford's Specialist Autism Services will perform two comedy pieces – ‘Spies’ and ‘Sunbridge Road Colliery Band’ – and local community group Cecil Green Arts will tell a story of urban devastation being transformed into a garden of colour in ‘Jack Be Little’.

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, portfolio holder for Employment, Skills and Culture, said: "There are some really original acts lined up for Bradford Festival, and plenty of opportunities for people to get involved through the interactive elements of the programme.

"The Festival is shaping up to be a great mix of local, national and international acts which will make for a really good weekend of activities and animation in Bradford City Centre.”

The Bradford Festival opens on Friday June 12, and runs until 8pm on Sunday, June 14.

Admission to the festival is free.

For further details, visit www.bradfordfestival.org.uk or search for the festival on Facebook and Twitter.