Sketch comedy and improv to feature at Live Theatre festival

North East improv group The Suggestibles are to work with members of the Live Youth Theatre at a four-day festival on Tyneside next month.

Suggestibles Ian McLaughlin and Bev Fox have been helping budding comedians ahead of the Party Poppers Youth Theatre Festival at the Live Theatre on Newcastle’s Quayside.

The festival, which runs from Thursday 8 to Sunday 11 August, is part of the theatre’s 40th birthday celebrations.

And McLaughlin and Fox, who founded The Suggestibles in 2004, have been training wannabe comics ahead of a show called Improthon, in which “the audience supplies the suggestions for the scenes and songs for the players to perform.”

The festival, now in its 14th year, will also feature newly-formed all-girl sketch group, Your Aunt Fanny, featuring members of Live’s Youth Theatre.

The group will work with local writers including Laura Lindow and Lee Mattinson, whose 2011 Facebook drama Jonathan Likes This was critically acclaimed.

Mattinson adapted his play Me & Cilla for BBC Radio 3.

Your Aunt Fanny aim to celebrate “everything that is funny, ridiculous and inappropriate in a collection of original sketches.”

A spokesperson for the Live Theatre said: “This is a chance to support some of the region’s finest young comedic talent as the group take to the main stage for the first time to showcase their hilarious brand of comedy.”

The Party Poppers Youth Theatre Festival also features a performance led by guest theatre-maker and writer Stella Duffy.

Tickets for all shows are £8, or £6 for concessions.

Your Aunt Fanny will have two performances on Saturday 10 August, while Improthon will take place on Sunday 12 August.  The shows are a part of the Party Poppers Youth Theatre Festival at the Live Theatre in Newcastle.