Newcastle's Live Theatre has announced its season from July to December, including a new one-man play for Edinburgh, a revival and a new play by Ron Hutchinson, as well as other works in development and work from South Africa.
For the Edinburgh Fringe, Ian McLaughlin (of The Suggestibles improv company) will perform his new one-man show Good Timin' which will preview at Live in July and then return in October. It follows his search for the father he never knew. Part stand up and part play, and using projections and technology, it looks at the whole nature/nurture debate from his own perspective.
September sees a revival of last year's hit, Paddy Campbell's Wet House which won Journal Culture Awards for Performance of the Year, Writer of the Year and Performing Artist of the Year (for Joe Caffrey) as well as being voted one of The Guardian's top ten plays of 2013.
Wet House was developed at Live (where it went through fourteen versions before the actual performance) and will return from 17 September to 11 October before touring to Hull Truck and the Soho Theatre.
November will see the world premiere of Flying into Daylight, a new play by Ron Hutchinson (Captain of Kopenick, Head/Case, Rat in the Skull, Moonlight and Magnolias) based on the story of Victoria Fischer's decision to leave behind her normal life in Britain and travel to Buenos Aires to learn the Tango. Two actors play forty parts between them; there will be plenty of music and the theatre will be transformed into a Tango club in Buenos Aires. The play, indeed, is a dance, said Live's Artistic Director Max Roberts.
It's about, he added, the transformative power of art, much like the theatre's huge hit The Pitmen Painters, and is very apposite at a time when Culture and Art are under attack in this country.
Flying into Daylight runs from 27 November to 20 December.
Live Lab, the theatre's new writing development programme, has four events during the season, all taking place in the Studio Theatre.
On 6 July is a new project, 10 Minutes to..., which replaces the Short Cut series which has run for a number of years. In it five playwrights are matched with five directors to produce five ten minute plays on a given theme. This first event focuses on 10 Minutes to... Save the World.
On 2 October there will be a scratch night of performances of new works-in-progress and from 15 to 18 October there will be a performance of Alison Carr's The Soaking of Vera Shrimp, which was the theatre's 40th birthday bursary prize winner.
The final Live Lab event will be Christmas Carnival, presented in association with Trashed Organ—a "night of debauched abundance!"
The season also features work from the Youth Theatre, participation in the Afrovibes Festival (including Mamela, presented by Curious Monkey in assocation with Live Theatre) and six visiting productions.