Brighton HorrorFest Returns For its 4th Year in 2019

This year's programme sees the return of popular cabaret group, the Foo Foo Fighters, who are bringing three evenings of burlesque to the first week of the festival with Nightmare on Middle Street, Dr Frankenbubble's Spoopy Soup Cabaret providing the late-night variety shows in the second week. Popular local entertainer Professor Elemental also makes an appearance with his Tales of Wrong for one night only.

Theatre is a strong feature of 2019's Horrorfest, including the debut performances of several new horror-themed plays, such as Suicide Notes; a psychological thriller from new local playwright David Wells; a one-woman version of Jekyll and Hyde; and Unquiet Slumbers; The Haunting of Emily Bronte, from award-winning playwright Sam Chittenden.

The theatre offering continues with Different Theatre's Sary (critically-acclaimed at Brighton and Edinburgh Fringes), Hermetic Arts' ANTHOLOGY, and Paragon Theatre Collective's The Signalman, based on a Charles Dickens story. Danse Macabre Productions return with their newest offering, Clown, and multi-award-winning Emily Carding revisits Quintessence; a piece set in a dystopian future where AI has been given the responsibility to restart humanity when the time is right. Katy Schutte also returns to Brighton with her sell-out Brighton Fringe hit show Let's Summon Demons.

There are also opportunities to enjoy some storytelling from Jason Buck, with Call of Cthulhu: A Cold Case, and Rachel Levy and Jon Mason's ghostly Norse tale, The Saga of Hervor and Heidrek. Magic and storytelling collide in both Stories from the Dark Side from Tracy Wise, and Ava Beaux's Mysterious Tales of Poe, which drew large crowds at Edinburgh Fringe this summer.

Comedy comes in the form of Isa Bonachera's The Evil in You, and Fright Wig's The Curtain Twitcher Cometh. If you prefer to dictate the style of horror you'd like to see, there's the opportunity to Choose Your Own Nightmare, or, for a series of short horror stories written and performed by local comedians, visit Professor Nordstrom's Compendium of Terror.

For the serious horror fans amongst our audiences, Griffin & Jones return to HorrorFest with their genuine séance experience Talking to the Dead. Face your fears, and join them as they use techniques from Victorian séance rooms to peer into the Great Beyond, and ask the question "Is anybody there?". Sceptics and believers welcome.

As it's half-term, there's even a couple of family-friendly workshops, including physical theatre fun with Make Yourself a Monster, and Made-Up Mayhem: Silly Spooks and Ghastly Goings-On, where the kids can create their own show and tell their grown-ups what to do!

Artistic Director, JD Henshaw, said, "It's amazing to be embarking on our fourth HorrorFest. The opportunity that it gives us to not only welcome our amazing Brighton audiences to some fantastic work, but to greet performers from around the UK to our beautiful city to share their work with us. It's thirteen days of mayhem, with new technologies in immersive theatre, family fun with our workshops, magic, comedy and some simply nasty horror to leave you worried to turn the light off.

Brighton HorrorFest 2019 is going to be bold, exciting, and full of thrills for all tastes! We can't wait to see you all there...."