Liverpool Improvisation Festival Archives

22Feb

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NEWS

Liverpool Improvisation Festival 2025

North West End UK are delighted to be attending, and writing about this year’s Liverpool Improvisation Festival, with shows to be held at The Unity Theatre, and improv workshops which will be held at the Joe H Makin Drama centre - LJMU. If you have never seen an ‘improv’ show or (if we can use the older word) ‘extemporisation’ show, then you are missing a treat. For those of you who are old enough, you may remember the show ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ hosted by Clive Anderson, which was many people’s introduction to improv, but if you are a young thing, go to YouTube for a taster session, it’s a classic! Every show at this festival is a world premiere, no storyline is the same, and as an audience member, you are the co-creators, so your genius suggestions are the inspir...

Hardy and Webb: Mystery at the Museum – Unity Theatre

There were a couple of mysteries surrounding this production for children. Part of the Liverpool Improvisation Festival, hosted at the excellent Unity Theatre, the first poser was: where was Becky Webb? The second: where were the children? No matter, the audience of adults thoroughly enjoyed this detective romp played with enthusiastic elasticity by Jen Hardy and Mike Burton, in place of Becky Webb. Improv for a beginner audience, the interaction was light but nonetheless introductory to the genre. An audience stooge was asked to play the role of the Chief who informed the detective duo that they were due a day off, whether they wanted it or not, and that they were to visit a museum. Mavis (possibly her real name) came up with the concept of a postal museum; my mate Jane came up with...

Your Flaws: The Musical – Unity Theatre

This fifty-minute whirlwind came as part of the Liverpool Improvisation Festival, which might look to become an annual event for the Unity theatre, following its launch last year. Alongside Patrick Clopon on the piano, Lee Apsey and Emma Wessleus explained their ‘flaws’, distastes and aversions, and invited us to share our own. As we admitted to being afraid of a range of kitchen devices (i.e. potato peelers, sieves, blenders) and taking umbrage with food combinations (i.e. mint and chocolate), the piano began to twinkle… Engaging with the audience’s culinary offers, the trio embarked on a journey through a haunted restaurant with all characters gifted with strange fears and desires which echoed our flaws back to us. We watch the tortured head chef fight for his Michelin star, a chef lo...