Sky Comedy Rep Hosted By Birmingham Comedian Darren Harriot

Our ground-breaking collaboration with Sky Studios comes to fruition this March as we invite you to be amongst the first to enjoy the work of the comedy writing stars of the future. Sky Comedy Rep will host its first-ever festival of new comedic short plays at here at The Rep from 03-05 Mar 22.

Performances on Sat 5 Mar will be hosted by the award-winning comedian, Birmingham’s own, Darren Harriott. Harriott has hosted Live at the Apollo and is a regular face on panel shows such Mock the Week and Don’t Hate the Playaz as well as giving his viewpoint on popular reality shows; The Apprentice: You’re Fired and The Great British Bake Off: Extra Slice. He’s a Comedy Central favourite on shows such as The Comedy Bus and Roast Battle and earlier this year he wrote and recorded his own 4 part series Black Label on BBC Radio 4. Performances on Thu 03 and Fri 04 will be hosted by BBC New Comedy Award finalist, Celya AB.

Eleven new comedy writers will present nine new plays in two sets of performances, each played twice over the course of three days, under the mentorship of some of the UK’s biggest names in comedy writing including Guz Khan (Man Like Mobeen), Meera Syal (Goodness Gracious Me, The Kumars) and Danny Brocklehurst (Brassic, Shameless).

Led by Sky Comedy Rep Patron, Julie Walters, the performances are the culmination of our new comedy writing talent development scheme with Sky Studios. Headed by The Rep’s Artistic director, Sean Foley, and Creative Director of Comedy at Sky Studios, Anil Gupta, this new yearly bursary and mentorship scheme gives early-career comedy writers the opportunity to have their ideas and scripts developed in collaboration with the finest talents in the industry.

It has been incredibly rewarding to see these gifted early career writers benefit from the Sky Comedy Rep programme. From working with their mentors, to having their scripts go through the rehearsal process and into production, this ambitious scheme is a unique way to test and improve their work. And now for the final test – the audience… are the plays actually funny? I think they are, and am so looking forward to seeing them in performance.

Sky Comedy Rep is delivering on its promise to offer significant national talent development in comedy right here in Birmingham; helping new writers who may not have access to conventional networks emerge and progress is a thrill, and something that will ultimately benefit the TV, theatre, film and wider creative industries.” Sean Foley

Whether it’s for theatre or television, comedy benefits from having a diverse pool of writers in the industry, and with Sky Comedy Rep, we want to give young, talented, funny people nurturing, encouragement and most importantly a foot in the door. In our first year, we were inundated with applicants and have lined up some of the best people in the business as mentors, and we’re incredibly proud of the results. We’re looking forward to this scheme going from strength to strength, creating the writing stars of the future.” Anil Gupta