Live Youth Theatre investigates food poverty in ‘Fed Up!’

Live Youth Theatre’s truly powerful and imaginative show Fed Up! will be served up again in Autumn 2024. Following a sell-out performance at Live Theatre in Spring, and shows at Newcastle United Foundation and Newcastle Cathedral, it will be performed to a select audience from the Young People’s Advisory Group (YPAG) at Newcastle’s RVI on Thursday 12 September 2024. The cast and creative team will then travel to the city of Gelsenkirchen in Western Germany to take part in InterTWINed, an International Youth Theatre Festival from Monday 16 to Saturday 21 September.

This exciting and thought-provoking show puts young talent and food poverty centre stage, with Fed Up! being an activist piece devised and delivered by the young people themselves. Using research, testimony and their own words 16 members of Live Youth Theatre investigated how hunger affects children and young people in the North East.

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?

Paul James Senior Creative Associate for Children and Young People said:

“‘Fed Up!’ uses the words of the young cast to highlight the devastating affect that food poverty is having on families, children and young people in our region and beyond. The piece pokes fun at politicians and their failure to come up with a solution to the problem. We are thrilled that Fed Up! will be performed at Newcastle’s RVI and at the InterTWINed Youth Theatre festival in Gelsenkirchen.”

Fed Up! received praise from audiences, amongst them Chi Onwurah MP for Newcastle Central and West who said:

“Extraordinarily powerful performance in Newcastle Cathedral from Live Theatre’s Youth Theatre, with Fed Up! about food poverty, young lives and political failure.”

InterTWINed

InterTWINedis a European Youth Theatre event with drama groups aged 14-19 years, attending from Germany, Estonia, Italy, Norway, Polan, Republic of Ireland and the UK. The participants will perform their own plays, discuss them in groups an participate in creative and task-based workshops under the guidance of professional artists. InterTWINed is all about using dramatic expression to establish friendships beyond borders and create partnerships.