Gemma's Journey

LONDON, 9TH MAY 2023 – Winner of Best Newcomer at the Scottish Comedy Awards 2019 Amy Matthews is set to bring her brand-new hour ‘I Feel Like I’m Made of Spiders’ to the Fringe, performing at Monkey Barrel The Tron at 3pm, throughout the festival. 

In her highly-anticipated new show, Amy Matthews spins a sparkling web of comedy magic in a mission to reconnect. After two relationships end in quick succession, she is left swinging between two states - stability and restlessness. Taking you into her world of breaking up, breaking down and the search for connection. Will she fix her life by kitting out an unfurnished flat, sitting in silence with geriatric Quakers, or telecommunication with a Portuguese Metallica fan? This is a show about the thrill of falling and the thud of landing. And after a thud comes a laugh.

Amy is a stand-up comedian, whose intelligent, distinctive and warm style has earned her a glittering arrival on the comedy scene. Lily Allen meets Kate McKinnon (Broadway World) in comedic force, she often weaves in and out of wry despair and whimsical imagination.

LONDON, 23RD MAY 2023 – BBC New Comedian of the Year 2021 Finalist Tamsyn Kelly brings her new stand-up hour ‘Crying in TK Maxx’ to the Fringe, performing at Pleasance Courtyard at 8.40pm throughout the festival. 

When working class Cornish comedian Tamsyn Kelly discovers footage of her estranged father in a Channel 4 documentary, she's forced to stop and reassess her life. How have men shaped who she is? Will the chicken-shop guy ever give her the time of day? Why was Mr Blobby her first crush? A brutally honest, but fair appraisal of the men in her life, from a woman who has cried in most high-street shops. Directed by double Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Amy Gledhill. 

Tamsyn Kelly is a working class comedian, actor and writer from Penzance, Cornwall. On TV, she has recently appeared in the Stand Up Sketch Show (ITV2) alongside Seann Walsh, and was a regional finalist in the BBC New Comedian of the Year Award 2021 (BBC One).  She is also set to star in Comedy Central Live (Comedy Central). As a comedian Tamsyn is a regular on the UK circuit performing at top comedy venues across the country, and supported Kiri Pritchard-McLean on her tour Home Truths.

She’s also a writer and performer on a new Cornish based BBC Radio 4 series Wosson Cornwall starring Dawn French, which was critics’ choice in both The Guardian and The Times. Tamsyn currently has various other scripted projects in development.

TAMSYN KELLY: CRYING IN TK MAXX

Winner of 2Northdown’s New Act Competition 2022 John Tothill is bringing his highly-anticipated debut stand-up hour ‘The Last Living Libertine’ to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, performing at Pleasance Courtyard Below at 8.30pm throughout the festival. 

Join John Tothill, the Last Living Libertine [citation needed], for his debut hour dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, full of exaggeration, emancipation and historical speculation. Performed by a gushing bon vivant (and Year 4 teacher), with an aptitude for flights of fancy and a revulsion for the mundane (specifically meal prep), let your cups overflow with this mix of cabaret and TEDTalk (aka stand-up comedy) featuring almost exclusively sleepover-style gossip. Come for the comedy; stay for the leopard print. 

John says: “To bring my show to this, the last ever Edinburgh Fringe, means so much, not just to me but to my community (classically trained clarinettists who were in bottom-set PE and now teach English). Here I am, on my knees, begging you to pour yourself a glass of incredibly dry white wine (or very pale rosé, that's fine too) and come to my conventionally attractive, highly educational show all about pleasure, where crucially you will learn nothing, but for a moment you could forget everything.”

John Tothill is an actor and comedian, who is now taking the UK comedy scene by storm having won 2Northdown’s New Act Competition in 2022. John has performed at The Upright Citizen’s Brigade in New York and Second City Chicago, as part of his sketch troupe. 

This show is directed by and dedicated to the late Adam Brace. 

-ENDS-

JOHN TOTHILL: THE LAST LIVING LIBERTINE

• Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Below

• Date & time: Weds 2nd to Sun 27th August (excluding 15th) at 8.30pm

• Duration: 60 minutes

• Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/john-tothill-the-last-living-libertine

YOU CAN FIND MORE OF JOHN AT: 

2Northdown’s New Act Competition 2021 finalist Paddy Young is set to bring his highly-anticipated debut stand-up comedy hour ‘Hungry, Horny, Scared’ to the Fringe, performing at Pleasance Baby Grand at 9.35pm, throughout the festival. 

Following sell-out previews at the 2022 Fringe, Northern scamp Paddy Young’s debut show mixes his charismatic, cult leader vibe with the inevitable reality that underneath it all he is hungry, horny and scared (aren’t we all?). Upon leaving a nightmare flatshare to move back in with his parents, Paddy is confronted with a spectacle that disturbingly resembles himself: Thor, a wanking walrus, stranded on Scarborough beach (it’s real, look it up). Join Paddy as he asks the hard-hitting questions: is everyone in his generation going to die still living in a flatshare? If Hitler was on drugs, how bad was his comedown? And what happens to TikTok families after their 15 minutes of fame? Let’s face it, Paddy is in the gutter, but he’s looking down on all of you.

Terry Hyde MA MBACP

Psychotherapist/counsellor

Terry started dancing at age 6, won a 5 year scholarship to the RAD afterwards attending the Royal Ballet Upper School, joining the Royal Ballet at age 18.  Hethen joined London’s Festival Ballet (now ENB) as a soloist, performed in musicals in London’s West End, in Film and on TV.

On retiring from performing, Terry set up a Business Manager for people in show business.  On selling the business 15 years later, he retrained as a psychotherapist attaining a Masters Degree in Psychotherapy & Healing Practice validated by Middlesex University in 2012.

A hilarious game show where each game represents a different disability, giving kids and grown ups the chance to learn about Autism and Cerebral Palsy among others. Host Benny Shakes invites the audience to help join in the games, while the panellists battle it out to come up trumps, in a show where disadvantage is an advantage!

★★★★★ 

“Lots of fun”

★★★★ 

“Cleverly thought out and engagingly interactive.”

★★★★★ 

“Extremely inclusive”

Blue Badge Bunch is an interactive, disabled led game show for all ages funded by Arts Council England. Created by comedian Benny Shakes and produced by Ingenious Fools, the project has been running for three years, and in that time has toured the UK twice, had a successful run at the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe, appeared at Vault Festival and many other prestigious theatres and festivals across the UK, as well as at schools and community groups, receiving critical acclaim for its disabled representation, educational value and innovative, fun games.

The format is a game show, where each game represents a different disability – drawing with your feet, making lunch one handed while being prodded, sensory overload while following instructions or guessing the symbol sentences from an AAC device.

Creator Benny Shakes has been performing comedy since 2019. After making a splash on the comedy scene, the pandemic hit, and Benny was forced to take his ideas online. Benny created a game show where comedians sent in videos of themselves taking part in challenges that highlighted disability. Once Benny was allowed to perform in person again, he took the show to Bradford Fringe and never looked back.

Benny found through his life that people would show him pity, not speak directly to him, assume that he was intoxicated, or unable to communicate. The driving force behind the show is to show people the societal and physical challenges disabled people live with every day, to inspire celebration of disability and educate children and adults.

This issue of disability is very badly neglected in most discussions around diversity, and as a result voices of disabled people themselves are almost absent. Benny continues to research and present insight into disabled people’s experiences and recommendations for the future and is determined that as Blue Badge Bunch grows it will provide many more professional and public opportunities for disabled people.

The show and workshops were initially supported by New Art Exchange’s European Regional Development Fund and has subsequently gained two rounds of Arts Council Funding for development and touring and more recently has been supported by Attenborough Arts Centre.

The show was shortlisted for the Neurodiverse Representation Award at the Edinburgh Fringe 2022, where it received fantastic reviews. The team are heading back to Edinburgh in 2023 for a full run at the Pleasance Courtyard.

MixUpTheatre.comThreeWeeksA Young(ish) Perspective

Aimee isTheatremaker from the North East of England, currently based in Yorkshire. They are lucky enough to write, direct, lecture in and perform theatre across the UK. Aimee is currently creating The Club at Laurels in Whitley Bay. 

Aimee isTheatremaker from the North East of England, currently based in Yorkshire. They are lucky enough to write, direct, lecture in and perform theatre across the UK. Aimee is currently directing The Beatles were a boyband for F-Bomb Theatre that is going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

We are Expial Atrocious - a West Midlands-based theatre company who specialise in absurdist theatre and abstract methods of storytelling. This year, we'll be taking our latest absurdist drama, 'BUTCHERED', for a limited run at the Lime Studio, Greenside, Nicholson Square. Created in just under five months, taking inspiration from Alfred Jarry's iconic play 'Ubu Roi', Splendid Productions' choreography and video game music, this two-hander is a monster of a show. It features dynamic physicalization, new writing and an original soundtrack to immerse, unsettle and shock our audiences...

"A sausage-maker and an apprentice walk into a kitchen, but this is no joke.

After working in a basement kitchen for as long as they can remember, Master Sausage is content with their life.

They work hard and cannot imagine doing anything else. They can't do anything else.

But when a fresh-faced apprentice arrives, babbling streams of consciousness, artistic passions

and a harsh reality are brought with them. With their daily routine disrupted, the Master is forced

to look their life in the eye and climb into the belly of the beast. With tensions rising, sinister questions start to rear their heads.

What does it mean to be happy? Is there more to life than this? What's in those sausages anyway?

'BUTCHERED' is a new, blood-thirsty absurdist drama about challenging tradition,

escaping the mundane and doing what has to be done."

Following the success of our 4-star digital show 'Hear. Speak. See.' from last year's Fringe, we can't wait to visit Edinburgh in the flesh and give audiences a twisted tale to sink their teeth into.

Triple A Food Tours is based in the vivacious city of Newcastle, the hub of the North East! The name Triple A derives from business owner Amy Whitfield's name, her son Archie & husband Andrew....(the three A's)

Northern Stage will produce a magical new adaptation of family favourite The Sorcerer’s Apprentice this Christmas (27 November - 31 December). Set in the streets of Newcastle but not quite as we know it, audiences will be treated to live music, puppetry, magic and illusion as they follow the adventures of Hatty Rabbit and her friends after a mysterious letter arrives inviting Hatty to an interview for a sorcerer’s apprentice…

Maria Crocker will direct her first main stage show for Northern Stage. Maria trained on the theatre’s first NORTH programme in 2013 where she met her fellow founders of The Letter Room, and has performed in several Christmas productions at the Newcastle theatre including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz adapted by Caroline Bird. An associate artist at Headlong, Maria’s credits include associate director on the Tony Award-winning Hadestown for the National Theatre and Local Hero for The Lyceum. She says, “It’s thrilling to be making a show for the epic space, having trained on Northern Stage’s NORTH scheme in 2013. This Christmas is all about making the normal feel magical. We have a fantastic team of creative wizards working tremendously hard to bring this Newcastle story to life in the most enchanting, sparkly way, and to spread some much needed festive joy.”

Adapted by Laura Lindow (The Snow Queen/Northern Stage, Key Change/Open Clasp), The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is designed by Amanda Mascarenhas (Run It Back/Talawa Theatre Company, Cuttin’ It/Royal Exchange Theatre), with lighting design by Jai Morjaria (Wuthering Heights/National Theatre & Bristol Old Vic), sound design by Matthew Tuckey (Wolf!/Kitchen Zoo, Repeat Signal/November Club), movement direction by Gavin Coward - a performer, member and collaborator with balletLORENT, and original music by Katie Doherty who has created music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, five family Christmas productions for Northern Stage and the award-winning musical Beyond the End of the Road. Molly Barrett-Manasseh will design and make the puppets, with puppetry direction by Thomas Walton, and associate director is North East dramaturg and director Rachael Walsh - one of two recipients of the 2021 JMK Victoria Wood Bursary.

Steve is delighted to be returning to Shone Productions for his fourth year, after playing Widow Twankey (Aladdin, 2019), Dame Dolly (Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs, 2018) & Mrs Smee (Peter Pan, 2017).

Born in Hull, Steve studied theatrical design at the Arden School of Theatre, Manchester before starting work as a freelance costume designer and maker, a job that he still loves to this day, and which he fits in around all of his other theatre work. (He even designed and made all of his own outfits for the show!)

An experienced Pantomime artiste, he has toured the country extensively in a wide range of pantos and children’s shows. Notable roles include: The Sea Witch in ‘The little Mermaid’, The Wicked Witch of the West in ‘The Wizard of Oz’; The Sheriff of Nottingham in ‘Robin Hood’ (twice!), and Fagin in ‘Oliver Twist’.

In 2020 Steve was delighted be one of the few performers to complete a full pantomime season, playing Dame Trott in Jack and the Beanstalk, at Drive-in to Winter, the UK’s only indoor drive-in.

Steve has spent 2021 proving once again that Panto is for life, not just for Christmas. In the summer he played Dame Dolly Donut in a national tour of’ Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ for Talegate Productions and then returned to them at Halloween for a national tour of ‘Harry Panto’ a parody of the popular wizarding franchise. He has also designed costumes for a brand new musical adaptation of ‘The Queens Knickers’ by Nicholas Allan.

A key figure in the cabaret and variety revival, Mat has performed by Royal command on more than one occasion, headlined and hosted shows across the UK, and regularly appears further afield, including residencies in the legendary European Variete theatres, appearances in gala shows on stage and television the world over, and regular invitations to perform in such iconic venues as the Royal Albert Hall, The Savoy Hotel, and Hollywood's Magic Castle

Paulus (aka Paul L Martin) has been working in the world of variety entertainment for 30 years since he curated his very first ‘variety show’ in his hometown of Littlebourne near Canterbury, Kent at the age of just fifteen in aid of Leukaemia Research Fund.

 Kristina Demou, is a UK based international performer and vocal coach. Having trained at the Royal Academy of Music, London, her versatility as a vocalist has taken her all over Europe, performing in Sweden, Norway, Spain, France, Germany and back again, on some of London’s finest stages including Wembley Stadium, The Royal Albert Hall and Her Majesty’s Theatre.

Her passion for mentoring has meant she has been able to share those skills and experiences with many teenagers, inspiring and coaching them to succeed on their journey to getting into top drama schools and establishments.

Dami is a cultural curator and photographer, my work focuses on creating multi-dimensional representation for marginalized communities. 

As a Black, Queer, non-binary woman, she turns her personal experiences both negative and positive into art, creating joy is one of my biggest passions. Dami also recently started her media company Navii Media which is home to creating events, amplifying the work of Black creatives and our stories online and offline.

Holly is a theatre maker, director and facilitator based in Thornaby, Teesside. She is interested in new work that speaks about the world we live in today and stimulates an audience’s imagination.

Dinner with strangers is always awkward, especially when you’re the guest of honour. You are cordially invited to the dinner party of your life. The dress code is come as you are. Secrets and all. Pour yourself into this twisted tale, relish in a new form of dynamic storytelling and devour this experience from a new perspective. We only ask that you make yourself at home, keep your elbows off the table and be who you say you are. Hear. Speak. See. is a brand-new immersive drama by Expial Atrocious… and we’ve saved you a seat.

Allison Miller is on trial pleading not guilty to all charges held against her. She is accused of tax evasion, bribery, fraud, murder, smuggling drugs into the US and selling and transferring nuclear weapons. Allison is desperate to prove to you, her jury, that she is innocent. She claims to have been used by the rich and powerful men around her, that all these crimes were committed by them, she was just their alibi. What will be your verdict? Do you believe Allison? Is she innocent or guilty? We will leave it up to you to decide.

Within the confines of a messy kitchen, six students grapple with the modern struggles of youth. Overwhelmed by debt, perplexed by romance, suffocated by chaos – for each student, life is an experiment, in which conflict is inevitable. Welcome to the Madhouse...

I talk to Amy Lawrence about her journey into the dance world. 

Patricia is a movement director based in Teesside and London.  She studied MA(Hons) Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow and trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama on MA Movement: Directing and Teaching. She is also a Movement Lecturer on BA(Hons) Musical Theatre at Leeds College of Music and an Associate Artist of Both Barrels Theatre.

My movement work is inspired through using the imagination and grounding it in the body through somatic practices influenced by yoga and contemporary dance. Her style of movement direction is informed by her yoga practice and her joy in social dancing - salsa, bachata, kizomba, ceilidh and period dances.

In this episode, I talk to Rachel O'Regan (Writer) & Hannah McEachern (Director) from F-Bomb Theatre.

We talk about the challenges that women face in the theatre industry and what changes to be made.

We also talk about their new show Afterparty that is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year.

Jonny was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied at Liverpool School of Art and The Royal College. He now lives in Southampton.

To mark the reopening of its four venues, Museums Northumberland presents a new countywide exhibition by illustrator and printmaker, Jonny Hannah, celebrating some of Northumberland’s strangest stories and most curious characters.

Northumberland Folk, which takes place across Museums Northumberland’s four sites – Woodhorn Museum, Hexham Old Gaol, Berwick Museum, and Art Gallery, and Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum – draws inspiration from the Museum Northumberland collections, the heritage buildings themselves, and hundreds of tales and contributions from the local community.

Each exhibition holds its own story and it is all told through Jonny Hannah’s paintings, prints, publications, and cut-outs, alongside objects and artifacts from the museum collections.

Northumberland Folk is now open at Woodhorn Museum, Hexham Old Gaol, Berwick Museum and Art Gallery, and Morpeth Chantry Bagpipe Museum and runs until 31 October 2021.

Mhairi Ledgerwood is a Scottish playwright based in the North-East of England. 

She has had several short plays performed at venues such as The Traverse, Live Theatre, Alphabetti Theatre, and Jabberwocky Market. Her one-act play White Noise was performed at ARC Stockton in 2015 as a rehearsed reading, following mentoring by Bruntwood Prize winner Vivienne Franzmann.

 Her play Parklife started as a short play at Live Theatre, before being developed for Live Theatre’s Live Lab Elevator Festival in 2017. In 2018, Mhairi's play Paper Tiger was given a rehearsed reading at The Royal Court and Northern Stage, following a development process through The Royal Court Writers Group (North). Paper Tiger was shortlisted for Theatre 503’s International Playwriting Award 2020. 

Mhairi was shortlisted for The Pentabus Writer in Residence award and long-listed for Box Of Tricks and Sky Studios Screen/Play award. 

She is currently developing a play about the first British women to compete at the Olympics for swimming, which is supported by a bursary from Live Theatre.

Mark Johnson is a theatre blogger known as Beyond The Curtain

Robert Wilson Baker is an Artist and Radio Host to Friday Night Rambles and The Theatre Show. 

We talk about this theatre career, his passion for Panto, and how he got to interview Basil Brush.

Elliott trained with the Year Out Drama Company (YOD) in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2013/14. He is the resident Music Director and Sound Designer for Tread the Boards Theatre Company (TTB), based at the Attic Theatre in Stratford, and co-Artistic Director of SE Theatre Company which is devoted to exploring new writing and interpreting classic and contemporary plays for a modern audience.

@elliott_wallis

@ttb86

@sethcompany

Meg Muir is a self-employed folk artist that specialises in exclusive art on Dartington crystal, professionally framed mirrors bespoke art for all gifting occasions. Commissions are taken to personalise gifts such as gin, wine, whisky sets, prosecco, decanters and vases and candle holders.

She also creates botanical art on sea glass which is created into beautiful and unique jewellery.