ABOUT BLACK LIVER

Black Liver are performance artist and poet Ruth Cockburn (Blackpool) and comic actor and musician Keith Carter (Liverpool).
Put the two together and you get Black Liver — a touring theatre company making bold, funny and heartfelt work.

Since forming in 2021, Black Liver have built a reputation for creating full evenings of entertainment that blend comedy, music, storytelling and audience participation. Their shows have played to sell-out audiences across the UK, including Miss Nobodies, Support Your Local Library! and Devilled Eggs.

Alongside touring, they write and perform for broadcast — including the BBC Radio 4 comedy Where To Mate? — and are regularly commissioned to create bespoke songs, workshops and performances for theatres, museums and festivals.

Black Liver’s work has been widely recognised. They were nominated for Best Theatre Production at Buxton Festival (2022) for Support Your Local Library!, and Best Comedy Show (2023) for A Soirée of Black Liver. Most recently, they won BBC Radio 4’s Best Sitcom Award, and helped Blackpool Grand Theatre secure the Children & Young People Now Theatre Award 2024 through their collaborative work.

Their Arts Council England–funded show Devilled Eggs was created to tour across both rural and urban venues. Developed in partnership with Showtown Museum Blackpool, Lancashire Archives and Blackpool Grand Theatre, the show reflects Black Liver’s commitment to making work that is accessible, flexible and rooted in place, while still being playful, surprising and deeply human.

At the heart of everything Black Liver do is the audience. Whether through laughter, song, competition or storytelling, their aim is always the same:
to send people home feeling like they’ve had a great night out, heard a story with heart, and met characters they recognise — or might even see a bit of themselves in.