Newcastle’s Live Theatre has announced its June to December 2013 season, comprising in-house and visiting productions.
First is a joint production with the Royal Exchange, Manchester: Alistair McDowell’s Bruntwood Prize-winning Brilliant Adventures which runs from 29th May to 15th June.
Ninteen-year-old science genius Luke finally has some peace to work on the extraordinary box in his living room, holed up in a dingy flat on a near-abandoned Middlesborough housing estate.
After his unbalanced brother Rob introduces him to a wealthy out-of-towner they're thrown in to a dangerous world that threatens to tear the brothers apart and unleash the power inside his invention...
Running from 27th June to 20th July is Tyne, created and edited by Michael Chaplin, which dramatises extracts from his book Tyne View, woven together with stories from Tom Hadaway, Julia Darling, Alan Plater, Sid Chaplin and Lee Hall. Illustrated with imagery of the river, Tyne is accompanied by live songs and music inspired by the river compiled by the show’s musical director, Kathryn Tickell. The writers featured have all collaborated with Live Theatre since it began in 1973.
From 16th September to 5th October Live presents Wet House, the first full-length play by writer Paddy Campbell. When Andy, an idealistic young graduate, gets a job in a Wet House, a homeless hostel where residents can drink alcohol, he is plunged into a twilight world where the rules about what is right and what is normal have become a little blurred. And that's just among the other staff.
Wet House is “a comedy tinged with sadness and tragedy.”
The from 17th October to 23rd November, the company will revive Lee Hall’s Cooking with Elvis which it premièred, first in Newcastle and then at the Edinburgh Fringe, in 1998.
Max Roberts, Live’s Artistic Director, said, “Cooking with Elvis is one of Live Theatre’s greatest hits, so in our 40th birthday year it seemed appropriate to revive it here in Newcastle for the first time since its première in 1998. That it has been produced extensively nationally and internationally since our première is a testimony to its universal appeal, emotional intensity and wild and anarchic humour.”
New work premièring in the Studio includes a script-in-hand performance on 7th and 8th June of Chicken Fox Productions’ Brown Bird, written by Lee Mattinson, starring Paula Penman and directed by Laura Lindow.
One woman. One secret. And One Direction. Brown Owl Beth is the model Brown Owl. She's selfless, sensible and everyone comes second to her sixes. But when ten year old Phoebe becomes the new addition to her proud nest, Beth's commitment to a good deed every day is tested to breaking point, because Brown Owl Beth brings about a chain of events from which her community may never recover, one which may leave this Brown Owl with more than broken wings.
On 11th and 12th July Rosie Kellagher directs writer and performer Alison Carr in a work-in-progress performance of The Soaking of Vera Shrimp. For fourteen-year-old Vera Shrimp a rainstorm isn’t a soggy inconvenience, it’s an exhilarating, breathtaking whirl of colours and feelings and words. Because Vera has discovered an extraordinary ability that might solve everything.
On 24th October it’s Scratch Night, jointly curated by Live Theatre and the Empty Space. The evening consists of short performances of work in development in the Studio Theatre followed by lively discussions with the writers, directors, artists and audience members afterwards in the bar.
On 12th December it’s Bursary Scratch Night, in which the audience the opportunity to suggest which of the shows they'd like to see further developed with Live Theatre and The Empty Space's 2014 Bursary.
Visiting companies include Farne Productions with Dick Curran’s Company (20th to 22nd June), OddManOut with Weather to Fly by Allison Davies (27th June) and Moving Family by Paul Charlton, produced by Northern Nomads (19th and 20th July).