Ever since Glastonbury Festival fanned our creative flames way back when, festivals have become an essential part of the Area 51 calendar. We understand the special atmosphere festivals generate among the crowds – and we know how to create it. We blend fun, fantasy and first-class acts in a mix that’s magical. And when it comes to freaky and fanciful, your wish is our command! From brightly costumed walkabout characters to quirky cabaret and circus sideshows to late-night fire show spectaculars.
For Festival clients after a complete solution we offer a package of performers and acts that work together in a variety of roles throughout the event. Cabaret, Circus, Walkabout, Fire and DJ stages; we create a schedule to cover all this and coordinate our team of artists to give you a flow of constant entertainment in all your important areas. It all adds up to more impact for your punters – and far less hassle for you!
We have created multiple festival stages, pop-up venues and themed bars for many clients – and of course we can provide amazing and imaginative décor for outdoor areas. We have a full scale outdoor stage, complete with the very latest hi-tech sound and lighting courtesy of our partners at AV51.
If it’s just festival performance you’re looking for, there’s our famous Caravan of Lost Souls – a complete pop-up Circus in a Box, just bursting with all the steampunk strangeness you could possibly imagine, and designed as the perfect festival entertainment fix. You can of course also book solo acts and characters, or spectacular Carnival parades of stunning stilt walkers to tower over the crowds. Festival credits include Download, Bestival and its sibling spin-off Camp Bestival, Secret Garden Party, Exit Festival in Serbia, Creamfields, Isle of Wight Festival, Boomtown, Hard Rock Hell, Sea Dance in Montenegro – and, of course, every Glastonbury that gets the go-ahead, come the rain or the rays! We also produce and manage all the entertainment for UK’s biggest ‘geek festival’, Sci-Fi Weekender.
“Glastonbury Festival has had the pleasure of working with Area 51 for many years and watched as the company continues to grow and grow, honing its craft with dynamic effect and professionalism.”
Haggis McLeod
Glastonbury Festival
“The Port at Bestival was our most ambitious structural build to date and was the talk of the festival … not least due to Area 51’s incredible energetic stage activity, dancing and aerial. The guys and girls worked their legwarmers off all weekend day and night and many of the acts drew audible gasps from the packed audience with their daring aerial trickery and relentless dance moves. Area 51, we salute you.”
Rob da Bank
Radio presenter and co-founder of Bestival
PREVIOUS PROJECTS
FESTIVAL AS SWEET AS HONEY!
Fun 51 freaks and funambulists flocked to the world’s crop circle capital to ensure a small British festival was as sweet as honey…
IGOR KING OF THE CASTLE
Igor Rasputin & his Caravan of Lost Souls stormed an Elizabethan castle to help British festival revellers celebrate the end of the COVID-19 lockdown.
SCI-FI FLY HIGH
Britain’s biggest sci-fi festival celebrated its tenth anniversary in style with Area 51 helping to blast it into a new orbit.
ROCK AND AWE AT AWARDS
AREA 51 helped honour some of the leading lights in the rock world at a four-day indoor festival. The company designed and crafted a collection of award trophies that were handed out at the annual Hard Rock Hell festival as it made its debut at a new venue, the Vauxhall Holiday Park in Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast.
A TWIST OF FETE
AN ENGLISH village fete was remodelled as a magical microcosm of fantasy and reverie after Area 51’s architects of dreams went to work… Quintessentially quirky and quixotically English, the fair held in deepest Oxfordshire, was a hive of the illusory after creatives and entertainers from the Warwickshire company created an event to live long in both the memory… and the imagination.
JOKER IN THE PACK
SUPERVILLAIN The Joker turned superhero in front of admiring youngsters at a family festival with the help of Area 51 and its renowned freak master Igor Rasputin.
PROFESSOR ELEMENTAL AND HIS LOST SOULS
Psycho sideshow squad The Caravan Of Lost Souls set tongues wagging and eyes popping at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival.
51 REIGN AT DOWNLOAD
AREA 51’s now legendary Caravan Of Lost Souls laughed off monsoon rain conditions to storm one of the UK’s most celebrated rock festivals.
VIKINGS HAIL THE NORSE CODE
Area 51 dancers cast their runes, donned shields and swords and rampaged across Wales and the north of England to help make two rock events the best this side of Valhalla! The performers were among the star attractions at the final Hard Rock Hell event held in North Wales and also at the HRH Vikings Festival staged in Sheffield.
WE LOVE EXIT
A crack team from Area 51 jetted out to Serbia to take centre stage at one of Europe’s biggest and best festivals. Appearing alongside Jax Jones and other globally-popular acts on the main Dance Stage at the huge Exit Festival which is staged annually inside the Petrovaradin Fortress in front of 198,000 fans!
CARAVAN HITS THE ROCKS
AREA 51’s creepy Caravan Of Lost Souls rubbed shoulders with some of metal’s heaviest heavyweights as Britain’s biggest hard rock hoedown exploded at Castle Donington. Igor Rasputin and his band of weirdos stormed the Download Festival alongside the likes of Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, Avenged Sevenfold, Marilyn Manson and Bullet For My Valentine.
LOST SOULS FREAKS OUT
AREA 51’s world-renowned psycho circus sideshow squad, The Caravan Of Lost Souls, were sensationally received as they got stuck in at another major festival, keeping alive the spirit of PT Barnum.
HAMMING IT UP AT SILVERSTONE
Area 51 helped bring a flavour of the Balearic party scene to Formula 1’s British Grand Prix staged at Silverstone. The company created a special “Ham-former” robot stilts character, a hybrid of the popular A51 Transformer and a Lewis Hamilton bobble head, which caused a storm among race fans
SCI-FI GEEKENDER
Area 51 warped space and time to transform a tiny part of North Wales into an intergalactic space base for sci-fi fans, geeks, fantasy fanatics and timelords alike. There was no tightening of the asteroid belt as dark energy
TWISTD FIRESTARTERS
What happens if you bring together the UK’s largest indoor winter music festival at one of the nation’s best loved holiday resorts with the warped wit and wisdom of Area 51?
NO SCIENCE FRICTION IN THE CITY
Steel city Sheffield shapeshifted into a science-fiction central station for starship troopers, time travellers, fantasy fans, droids and more who descended on the Yorkshire city to wallow in the weird and wonderful for a warp-speed weekend away
THE PARTY’S OVER
A crack swarm of 60 Area 51 star-performers helped ensure the last ever Secret Garden Party wasn’t a washout despite the festival being saturated by Monsoon-like rain!
GLASTO GO-GO FOR TURBO SIDESHOW
Igor Rasputin and his hand-pulled Caravan of Lost Souls were not in the mood for any go-slow at the legendary Glastonbury Festival with a blistering turbo sideshow of curious, kooky, craziness to keep revellers in the field
CARAVAN ROCKS UP AT DOWNLOAD!
Itinerant Igor Rasputin and his band of merry pranksters, freaks and performing peculiarities, pitched in at Britain’s most popular heavy rock festival to play up to their reputation as Europe’s leading spaced-oddities! Area 51’s aberrant master of ceremonies, sensation and strangeness, Rasputin rocked up at Download 2017.
51 ROCK IT AT STELLAR WEEKEND
A remote corner of North Wales was zapped into an interdimensional and intergalactic space colony as Area 51 helped stage the biggest sci-fi and fantasy festival seen in the UK! Thousands of sci-fi fans beamed down into Pwlhelli on the Lleyn Peninsula for a long weekend where normal reality was suspended and a colourfully costumed alternative existence emerged.
AREA 51 IS ROCK FESTIVAL’S TRUMP CARD
The biggest and most badass Hard Rock Hell festival yet saw Ugly Kid Joe take to the stage with a troupe of raunchy dancers wearing Donald Trump masks. The girl performers from Area 51 were part of a huge team from the company who helped celebrate the tenth anniversary of Britain’s largest residential rock festival in style.
ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR BESTIVAL
Area 51 hoisted the sails, cast aside any lily-livered swabs in their way and swash-buckled into action to storm one of the UK’s most happening festivals off the south coast. A crew of 45 buccaneers boarded the so-called ‘Shady Lady’ pirate ship stage at Bestival 2016 and took no prisoners with a bawdy weekend of manic mayhem and merry-making that only true legends are made of.
RA RA RASPUTIN ROCKS THE GLASTONBURY SCENE
Exiled Prussian showman Igor Rasputin carted his Caravan of Lost Souls to England’s famous Glastonbury Festival for four frantic non-stop days and nights of hedonism under the stars.
LOST IN SPACE, FOUND IN DORSET!
Igor Rasputin’s celebrated Caravan Of Lost Souls became “Lost In Space” as it took centre stage at Europe’s primary festival for children and young people! The caravan’s usual repertoire of twisted circus performance delights
AREA 51 A-MAZE AT GARDEN PARTY
Area 51 ensured everything in the garden was rosy and other-worldly at one of the UK’s most stunning festivals. A gargantuan-sized crew of 65 crack entertainers descended on the stunning Secret Garden Party site in the picturesque environs of Cambridgeshire to deliver a four-day quota of quixotic mirth that left revellers smiling from ear to ear.
MUDDY HELL! EDDIE’S BACK!
A platoon of crack all-weather Area 51 performance artist commandos battled bravely against the elements to set up a monstrous reunion with an escapee who has been on the run with Iron Maiden all year!
FEELIN’ AWWL-WIGHT AT EPIC FESTIVAL!
Area 51 performers are pretty famous for making a big entrance but at the Isle Of Wight Festival they gave many helping hands to two lucky people who won a national prize to take their bows in jaw-dropping style! Teaming up with Strongbow cider
BLESSED ARE THE GEEKS AT SCIFI
Legendary actor Brian Blessed and Area 51 teamed up to create a sci-fi supernova at one of Europe’s biggest and best events for followers of all things fantasy and futurist! The seventh annual Sci Fi Weekender was hailed as the best yet after a galaxy of stars and performers shone to stun the audience after teleporting into North Wales.
MUDDY GREAT DOWNLOAD FRENZY
A detachment of 51 Area 51 performers (!) withstood everything that Mother Nature could chuck in their direction to emerge muddied and euphoric after three days and four nights of badass shows and partying
SOLAR SCI-FI WEEKENDER
Area 51 looked to the heavens for cosmic inspiration to eclipse past triumphs with a stellar display at a celebrated gathering of diehard sci-fi fans. The sun, moon and 51 were all in conjunction as performers used the grand spectacle
WOOD ZOO BELIEVE IT!
If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise…as the spirit of Ibiza was reborn in Leicestershire!A herd of bright eyed and bushy tailed Area 51 performers stampeded in woodland close to the famous motor racing circuit at Donington and partied for three days non-stop as part of the third annual Zoo Project Festival which recreates the famous hedonism of the Iberian holiday isle.
KIDS GO CRAZY AT CAMP BESTIVAL
The Caravan Of Lost Souls was born again as a stunning child-friendly circus to conquer Britain’s best family festival. Igor Rasputin’s pop-up caravan of cabaret curiosities was brilliantly rebranded for young eyes and ears to universal
AREA 51 AT EXIT FESTIVAL
Area 51 stormed a 17th century fortress in the Balkans before continuing with a rampage of hedonism down to a coastline festival on the shores of the Adriatic Sea more than 300 miles away. Two stunning festivals in a mere seven days of blissful indulgence was a tall order for even the most diehard 51 crew members used to punishing schedules of hard work and hard partying but the Class of 2014.
66SICK AT GLASTONBURY
Sometime in the past before the future began, the 66Sick office was deserted, machines slowed before grinding to a halt, silicon chips were fried and a creeping growth of plant life in a garden of evil carpeted the once busy hive of activity with organic abandon.
SCISSOR SISTERS COLLABORATIONS
American disco-glam group, Scissor Sisters, regularly team up with Area 51 to help create stunning show costumes and props for their extravagant live performances
BIG FUN AT RUN TO THE SUN
Robots, space girls, butterflies and tribesmen cooked up Cornish delight as they ran to the sun to storm the festival that refuses to die! Area 51 characters invaded the resort of Newquay in Cornwall for the impressive Run To The Sun Festival which despite rumours of imminent death, continues to thrive as one of Britain’s best annual bashes.
SCI-FI SUPERNOVA
A galaxy of Area 51 performers detonated an entertainment supernova to help make a major sci fi festival a cosmic success! The extensive 40-strong Area 51 team descended on a North Wales holiday park for the fifth
RAVE ON THE WAVES AT BESTIVAL
Area 51 rocked the dock as H.M.S. Bestival dropped anchor at one of Britain’s best-ever festival arenas. It was full steam-ahead as shipmates shared the fun in an amazing nautical-themed party at Bestival on the Isle of Wight.
ANIMAL MAGIC AT ZOO PROJECT
One of Britain’s wildest festivals was treated to spellbinding animal magic as Area 51 turned zoo keepers! A herd of animal characters hoofed down to Donington Park in the leafy East Midlands to stampede in a safari of surrealism at the amazing Zoo Project Festival.
CARAVAN OF LOST SOULS AT GLASTONBURY 2013
Area 51 vamped up Glastonbury Festival’s 40th anniversary with vaudevillian va-va-voom! The show-stopping travelling circus, the Caravan Of Lost Souls rolled into the festival’s theatre & circus arena for a string of shows that stunned revellers. The caravan is essentially a Victorian box-on-wheels that unfolds into a gloriously Gilliam-like stage set.
SPACE-TACULAR SCENES AT SCIFI WEEKENDER
It’s a Sci-Fi Convention Jim, but not as we know it! 51 load up the vans and boldly go – to West Wales… We embarked on 2 incredible days packed full of Sci-Fi themed walkabout and truly massive stage-shows
AREA 51’s TWISTED CIRCUS
Peer into the twisted world of Area 51 with the company’s own “Twisted Circus.” These shots were taken at the Big Reunion event at the end of 2007 and highlight a crew of specially commissioned Circus performances. With thanks to Marc de Groot for some of the photos.
