Fledgling North East theatre company take first steps into live comedy

A fledgling theatre company are taking their first steps into live comedy on Friday.

Generic Girl Productions, set up by friends Kylie Ann Ford and Rachael Walsh, have scripted a short comedy called Crawl – about two girls on a pub crawl.

However, despite their background in theatre, the pair have decided to debut their new play at the Life of Riley, a bustling city centre pub in Sunderland.

Explaining the decision, Ford said: “We want to take Crawl around pubs and bars in order to reach an audience we may not get in the theatre.

“A lot of theatre lately is perceived as – and often is – gratuitous arty-farty style over substance shows for the sake of being artistic, but Generic Girl is all about entertainment.”

Ford and Walsh, both from South Shields, met through the junior section of Westovian Theatre Society when they were 14.

They started writing while studying at Northumbria University together.

However they grew tired of the samey roles they were being offered in local theatre, and set up Generic Girl Productions as a platform to script more interesting female leads.

“Me and Rachael are both 20-odd year-old brown-haired females…pretty standard, generic girls on paper,” said Ford.

“We’re really all about creating great female characters and stepping away from the ‘generic girl’ roles we’d be auditioning for in most other plays.

“We can’t wait to get started.”

Crawl is at the Life of Riley, Sunderland, on Friday 21 June. The show starts at 8pm, and entry is free.