As autumn leaves give way to the crisp winds of winter, Live Theatre in the North East offers a feast of creative events destined to captivate audiences. From ghostly tales in 'Saint Maud' to the charming child-inspired 'Blitzen on the Tyne,' this season promises something for everyone. With celebrated artists like Stephen Tompkinson narrating eerie stories and Kathyrn Tickell enchanting with her Northumbrian tunes, the theatre becomes a hub of artistic expression. Join us as we explore the hearty lineup, including festive family events and artist development opportunities.

A Season of Stories and Spectacles at Live Theatre

To complement an audio described show, this is a hands-on tour of the set, describing props, costumes, characters and the visual style of the show, especially for visitors with visual impairments. Touch Tours must be booked in advance. They usually take place an hour before the main performance. 

Touch Tour - Champion

Live Theatre

Ho ho ho! A very special guest returns to Live Theatre with a heart-warming and enchanting festive mini-play for children in our cosy Undercroft.

Father Christmas takes time out of his very busy schedule to spread some cheer and tell a sparkling and interactive tale.

Santa at Live Theatre

Written by Danielle Slade in collaboration with primary school children from the North East from Northern Counties School-Percy Hedley Foundation, St Johns Primary School & High Spen Primary School

Live Theatre presents a brand new gloriously wintery treat for children. A laugh-out-loud visually sumptuous new play about a Reindeer who takes on the Toon. Merging the pen of talented writer Danielle Slade with the uncontrollable imaginations of school children, Blitzen On The Tyne is proper new writing for kids!!!

Blitzen on the Tyne

A high octane, energetic, festive show from an award-winning creative team, with an incredible soundtrack, that tells the story from an invisible community.

It’s the 23rd of December and Dave is preparing his Christmas tradition – to party like it's 1994, the drinks are flowing, the music is pumping. Tonight's going to be a good night. Until the buzz from his phone stops the noise - bringing him back to the real world.

Present

Kathryn first took up the Northumbrian smallpipes at the age of nine, inspired by her family and the music of an older generation of traditional musicians. The stories of the people that lived and worked in rural Northumberland were part of her childhood and her personal evocation of this is heard in the traditional tunes and songs that she brings to audiences all over the world.

Kathryn Tickell & Friends – Beyond Kielder Side

Take a trip down memory lane with national treasure Si King and get to know the man behind the bike like never before. Si invites you to an evening of memories, music, and laughs where he will pull back the curtain on the moments that made him who he is.

An Evening with Si King

Karen Dunbar is a Scottish comedian, actress and writer. Her rise to fame came when she appeared on television on the BBC series Chewin' the Fat, and was subsequently given her own show by the channel, The Karen Dunbar Show. 

An Audience With Karen Dunbar

After sell-out London runs, critical acclaim, a U.S. transfer and a run at Edinburgh Fringe, join harbingers of queer chaos Awkward Productions (Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story), as they transform Live Theatre into Deer Valley Ski Resort. 

Gwyneth Goes Skiing

Live Theatre’s brand new writing showcase and development event with all creative positions filled from Open Calls for North East based Writers, Directors and Actors. A whole host of opportunities for theatre creatives of all experiences to flourish in a safe and supportive space, with live feedback, networking and championing of the amazing artists of our region.

Live Writes

Join the ever-tasteful, often hilarious, always readable writer and broadcaster Jay Rayner as he celebrates 25 years as The Observer’s award-winning restaurant critic with the publication of Nights Out At Home, a memoir-in-recipes.

Throughout his quarter of a century eating professionally in some of the world’s best (and frankly worst) restaurants, Jay has always reverse-engineered his favourite dishes; now he’s ready to share with you those brilliant recipes and his memories of the restaurants that served them.

Jay Rayner: Nights Out At Home – Live

Improv Club can take on various forms. It could be a night of improv games, spontaneous playlets, musical montage or a combination of all sorts. It’s a surprise! It all depends on the suggestions you give, and where the moment takes us all. All the players are up for a laugh and we hope you are too.

Improv Club

Enjoy a show packed with a vibrant mix of cabaret, comedy, art, and drag, showcasing some of the most exciting and boundary-pushing artists in the region.

Hosted by the sensational performance artist and avant-garde cabaret performer David Hoyle, featuring Mama Rhi and more acts announced soon!

Live Theatre is Curious

On November 22 1974, the IRA planted bombs in two Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people and injuring almost 200 others. Six men convicted of the bombings were later found to be innocent. Fifty years on Chris Mullin, talks about his recently republished book, Error of Judgement and its implications for British justice.

Chris Mullin In Conversation + Book Signing

Live Theatre is thrilled to welcome phenomenal Maxine Peake to our stage for a rare conversation with our Artistic Director, Jack McNamara.

From Dinner Ladies to Hamlet, to working with some of the most celebrated directors of our time, Maxine remains one of our most consistently adventurous and widely adored actors of stage and screen.

Live Encounter:An Evening with Maxine Peake

The North East’s leading paranormal investigators, GhostNE, will host a first ever ghost hunt at the historic Quayside venue on Halloween Night.

From 9.15pm until 1am a limited group of up to 25 people will explore the venue’s oldest and spookiest sites in search of evidence of paranormal activity or presence.

GHOSTNorthEast Paranormal Investigation

In the run up to Halloween, Stephen Tompkinson and other special guests will read previously unheard ghost/spook stories by top level North East writers including Eliza Clark,  Benjamin Myers, Matt Wesolowski and David Almond as curtain raisers to Live Theatre’s highly anticipated production of Saint Maud.

Saint Maud

Touch Tour - Saint Maud

Young people aged 10 - 25 (school year 6 upwards) - meet new friends, develop self-confidence and create original plays that reflect their views and opinions in weekly sessions delivered by some of the most exciting theatre makers in the region.

Live Youth Theatre meet weekly throughout the school year, starting in late September. Split into two exciting parts, young people will develop their skills in stage craft, develop a new play to perform on the stage and explore scripts that have been produced and performed here at Live Theatre.  Live Youth Theatre is the largest FREE theatre and drama programme for young people in the North East of England running groups at our Live Theatre venue in Newcastle

Live Youth Theatre

Football, politics and the Labour of love. A winning new play about how things can only get better.  It’s Spring 1996, Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United are riding high in the Premier League and Tony Blair’s New Labour are gathering pace. Hope is in the air and victory seems within reach. Len, a long-term hard-left activist, has decided to run as a candidate for local Labour MP, but the arrival of Victoria from Manchester as New Labour’s front-runner throws a spanner in the works. With loyalties tested and tensions reaching fever pitch, the winning team will be decided in an explosive head-to-head challenge.

Love It If We Beat Them

Join the Lasses and the Girls, Theys and Slays for an evening of local female and non-binary talent. A mixed bill of cabaret performances, a new local choir and a community meal, curated and presented by Rosie Bowden. Let's crack on and change the narrative. It’ll be lush.

Lasses at Live!

Three-time Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee tries some new jokes.  
As seen and heard on Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week, Michael Mcintyre's Big Show and Shared Baggage.  

Larry Dean: Work in Progress

As seen and heard on Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week, Michael Mcintyre's Big Show and Shared Baggage. The three-time Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Larry Dean joins us for an exclusive evening of chat and candid questions in our intimate cabaret space.

The Encounter will take place at 7pm - 8.30pm in our Main Theatre before Larry's Work In Progress stand up show at 9pm in our more intimate Studio Theatre Upstairs.

Live Encounter: Larry Dean

Join your hosts for the evening…wannabe popstar Bonnie Love and singing sweetheart Gloria Love as they introduce you to The House of Love and prove that love is really all you need!

Direct from Newcastle’s vibrant LGBTQ+ cabaret scene expect stunning performances from pocket rocket Costa Fortune, dancing diva Cherri Bomb, singer/songwriter MXYM, voguing diva Chai Tea and the absurdly camp Love Deluxe Erotica!

All You Need Is Love

Everything is awful but that’s ok, argues Tom Lawrinson in this ridiculously entertaining show about family and growing up in a Spanish subterranean cave.

An unusual origin story from an unusual comedian!

Buried Alive (and loving it)

Athens Of The North is a new play exploring the people that make up the fabric of the city of Edinburgh through humanity, love, loss and family.  It speaks to the microcosm of a universe we find ourselves in, how everything is connected even if we don't know about it. In a city being commodified and gentrified so rapidly, three Edinburgh characters weave in and out of each other’s lives; a stream of consciousness set in the capital city over the course of a single day. They subsequently reconnect with what their home truly means to them, in their respective pasts, presents as well as their futures.

Athens Of The North

Are you confused, overwhelmed or feel stupid about politics? Luca does. So, she’s throwing a party. A political party. There will be music, dancing and eggs! No suits. No know-it-alls. No big words.   

You’re invited to this thinking out loud party, where it’s okay to be wrong, to not know, where you don’t need to hide the questions you pretend to have the answers to. 

Luca Rutherford’s Political Party

2024 is the fortieth anniversary of the 1984/85 miners’ strike, a dispute that still resonates today.  But the strike wasn’t just about pickets vs police – in this thought-provoking musical comedy, there are no miners and no cops. Instead, we follow the fortunes of three sisters in a pit village, hit hard by the Government’s war against the miners and determined to set up a branch of ‘Women Against Pit Closures’.

We're Not Going Back

Coinciding with Wimbledon, we are thrilled to welcome this awardwinning play by our Associate Artist Kemi-Bo Jacobs inspired by the remarkable life of tennis player Althea Gibson - further developed from its original run at Alphabetti in 2022.

All White Everything But Me

Sam and his fiancé Noel have been together for years. They have a house, a cat and their whole lives ahead of them. But when a sudden and permanent distance crashes into their relationship, it falls upon Sam to discover where their story goes from here. Harlow Playhouse presents this new work by Tom Ratcliffe. Wreckage is a touching story about continuing bonds and love that only evolves and never dies.

Wreckage

Trailblazing musical partnerships with, amongst others, Steeleye Span, Dave Swarbrick and his award-winning wife (Norma Waterson) and daughter Eliza Carthy have resulted in more than 40 albums. He’s a ballad singer, a ground-breaking acoustic and electric-guitarist and an authoritative interpreter of newly composed material. His settings of traditional songs with guitar, have influenced a generation of artists, including Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

Martin Carthy

Legendary poet Tom Pickard joins forces with much loved band Tarras for this highly special meeting of worlds. From the English-Scottish Borders, Tarras provide a unique blend of the Gaelic and British folk tradition subtly fused with a range of genres

Tom Pickard and Tarras

An exciting showcase of new work exploring LGBTQIA+ life, through the ideas and voices of 11-19 year olds.
Join us for an evening of performances and presentations by young creatives from across the North East.

Live Theatre is Curious: Youth Showcase

The Donkey, The Whippet and The Giant Leek is a 90 minute entertaining show starring Graeme Danby and Valerie Reid celebrating the music of North East composer Eric Boswell.

The show features more than a dozen songs ranging from comic favourites The Whippet and The Great Longbenton Leek to gorgeous ballads such as The Summer of Last Year and Katie Was There from the musical he wrote with Catherine Cookson.

The Donkey, The Whippet & The Giant Leek

Having become a fixture of Newcastle’s DIY scene, the Bitchfinders will bring their infamous Bitch Trial to Live Theatre to celebrate the release of their first EP.

BFG features hypnotic glitched-out synth and vocals from Jayne Dent (Me Lost Me), DIY Ceilidh’s Frankie Insley delivering shouty gothy madness and guitar alongside driving bass from DGA Collective’s Sarah Li and the merciless drum beats of James O’Coaimh (Bullion Train).

Bitchfinder General

Unleash your creativity and have your voice heard as we collaborate with LGBTQIA+ artists from across the North East. Take over the theatre, learn new skills and be part of creating new exciting work that represents you and your experiences.

Creative Youth Challenge with Curious Arts

We are thrilled to welcome Rufus Norris, Artistic Director of the National Theatre, to Live Theatre’s stage. Rufus will discuss his many experiences running the National over the last nine years and share his views about the state of the art form and sector, with an opportunity for audience questions. A rare opportunity to hear candidly from one of the leading figures in our industry.

Live Encounters: Rufus Norris in conversation

Touch Tour - The Bounds

a solo theatre show celebrating how the afon wysg / river usk (flowing through south wales), is in our blood, and has saved our life. some rivers have rights, this one has riots (site of britains last insurrection). journey upstream with us from that city of insurrection (cas newydd / newport); visit where we wrote our first poem in childhood (wales now has the right to play enshrined in law); our first punk gig (as audience member defying sick-chiatry); defynnog yew tree that defies science (the oldest heartwood has rotted so it cannot be accurately carbon-dated); red kites almost wiped out in the 1970’s clung on here, to successfully rewild all over; how welsh poppies taught us post-traumatic growth is possible; and out onto mountain at river’s source that first literally widened our horizons.

yu have already survived - Performances

Percy and Ro are stuck on the boundaries, again, on a pitch that stretches as far as the eye can see. Something’s different this year, something’s on the change. The ground is frozen hard as Weardale granite, men in black cloaks beat the bounds with willow branches, and a strange light is burning in the sky.

The Bounds

Join our wonderful Saturday Academy on their journey to find a job, something a lot of us take for granted. During this show, you'll see our three contestants battle it out during knockout rounds, to see who wins the highly sought after prize... 

A play created and performed by local artists with learning disabilities from The Twisting Ducks Theatre Company. 

Employment Roulette

In 2016, the UN found that “grave or systemic violations” of the rights of disabled people were taking place throughout the UK. Wearing a mixed reality headset, you will enter a striking, holographic gallery that lays bare the consequences when state safety nets fail. 

Museum of Austerity

Food is at the heart (and the belly) of every culture. It is something we all have in common. We need it to live but how else does it affect our lives? Our emotions? Our bodies? And what happens if you don’t get it?

Using research, testimony, and their own words, a talented group of young people from Live Youth Theatre create a powerful and imaginative show investigating food poverty and how hunger affects children and young people in the North East.

Fed Up

What does Home mean to you? Is it about community, friendships, computer screens or is it simply where the heart is?

Join Live Youth Theatre as they take a deep dive into the word Home through an electric mix of theatre and spoken word performances

Home

Join Sam; a self-confessed people-pleaser, in the war room as he embarks on his biggest mission yet. Shame is coming in from the west flank and gay thoughts are sailing in from the east... This is war!  

Bi-Topia

Continuing our popular series of Live Encounters, we are delighted to welcome legendary actor Dame Sheila Hancock for an insightful conversation with our Artistic Director, Jack McNamara about her illustrious achievements. 

Sheila’s extensive career has ranged from the original West End casts of Sweeney Todd, Annie and Sister Act to being the first Woman Artistic Director of the RSC’s tour; from playing Ranyevskaya in The Cherry Orchard at the Royal National Theatre to Celebrity Gogglebox; and from Senna Pod in Carry on Cleo to winning an Olivier Award for her performance as Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret.  

Live Encounter: Dame Sheila Hancock

Award winning Artistic Director of Graeae, Jenny Sealey has spent a lifetime championing stories by Deaf and disabled artists. Now she takes to the stage to tell her own story. Unravelling the past and facing the future, Self-Raising is a blisteringly honest, laugh-out-loud one-woman show about growing up deaf in a family with secrets. 

Self-Raising

2013: a big year for Julie.  After filming her last scenes on Coronation Street, she took herself off to the Lakes to ready herself for her big leaving do, and to spend time reading the diaries and notebooks left by her dad, John, after his death at the start of the year. What followed was a journey of discovery, as she got to know the bright and poetic young man with the thwarted education and the broken heart through John’s stunning words, many of them written in the 40s and 50s.

These I Love

Internationally acclaimed playwright Shelagh Stephenson will be running an-in person playwrighting masterclass for women aged 35 and over who have had to stop or pause their writing because of other duties, whether children, caring for someone or other life obstacles emerging. 

All levels of experience are welcome, although this session will be best suited to those with a current dramatic project they are working on or wanting to start. Participants are asked to come armed with a question for Shelagh.

Shelagh Stephenson Masterclass for women 35+

Internationally acclaimed playwright Shelagh Stephenson will be running an-in person playwrighting masterclass for women aged 35 and over who have had to stop or pause their writing because of other duties, whether children, caring for someone or other life obstacles emerging. 

Get ready for a cracking night of North East creatives coming together to try out brand new work for the first time in front of an audience. With 4 short plays, 2 live musicians and a proper funny comedian.

Greenhouse

We are thrilled to present an exclusive first staged reading of Seconds Away! an original play with songs starring celebrated actor and musician Jimmy Nail and written by legendary screenwriter Ian La Frenais. 

Live Theatre

Feb 26, 2025

Touch Tour - Champion

14 - 22 Dec, 2024

Santa at Live Theatre

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