What's On Northwest 7-14 Apr: ¡Viva! Festival

Each week The Skinny team hand pick a selection of the best events from the Northwest cultural calendar to provide you with this here top ten guide to the most exciting goings on for the week ahead. From gigs, plays, and exhibitions, to spoken word, pop-up foodie events, and one-off film screenings, we give you the insider's guide to things to do in Liverpool, Manchester and beyond every Thursday morning.

¡Viva! Festival
HOME, Manchester. Thu 7-Sun 24 Apr, times vary

Spanish and Latin American festival ¡Viva! returns to HOME this week for its 22nd edition, this time with a dedicated programme of theatre and visual art nestled among the many film highlights, which include Venezuelan Golden Lion winner From Afar (pictured) and a retrospective dedicated to Ricardo Darin, which includes South America's first foreign language Oscar winner, El Secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes). Things get off to a promising start theatre-wise with the world premiere of Derailed, along with a showcase of award-winning Cuban playwright Abel González Melo also to look forward to. Read our full preview here.

Double Act: Art and Comedy
Bluecoat, Liverpool. Fri 8 Apr-Sun 19 Jun, 10am (launch night 6pm)

A new exhibition exploring the funny side of art, Double Act: Art and Comedy brings together the work of 16 international artists who have used a variety of media to communicate their different approaches to comedy – from bodily humour and slapstick to conceptual articulations of wit. Look out for Maurice Doherty's neon sign, reading, 'I slept with the curator to get this show.' Sniggers and chortles abound.

Photo: Amanda and Cucumber, Gemma Marmalade, 2015. Courtesy the artist.

Pender Street Steppers
Hidden, Manchester. Fri 8 Apr, 10pm

Rhythm Section and Ruf Kutz are teaming up to welcome Mood Hut's Pender Street Steppers (aka Jack Juston and Liam Butler), who'll be heading over from their Vancouver base to play all night long, and in turn prove why the Canadian West Coast is rapidly conquering the world with the delectable Mood Hut sound. Keen? Check out this mix to get you in the mood for some straight-up, feel-good new-age house.

Page to Stage Festival
Various venues, Liverpool. Until Sun 17 Apr, times vary

Page to Stage is a two-week theatre festival showcasing emerging talent at venues across Liverpool. You can get a festival pass for the nifty sum of £36 or buy tickets individually for the likes of An Everyday Apocalypse (pictured) by Thomas Oléron Evans, Clark McWilliam's The Reluctant Celebrity, Brian Coyle's Orwellian thriller Welcome to Paradise Road, KT Parker's The Chamber of Beheaded Queens and much more.

Quizadelphia
Kosmonaut, Manchester. Tue 12 Apr, 7.30pm

There may be a whole ton of pub quizzes to rifle through each week, but can you say you've ever been to one themed on ingenious cult TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? It's looking to be a busy one, so enquire about registering a team by emailing Kosmonaut – details here. No doubt the team name roster will be packed with rum hams, kitten mittens, fat Macs and other such nods to the good folk at Paddy's Pub. It's gonna be a real classy affair.

ADVERTISEMENT | Celebrate Thai New Year at Thaikhun
Thaikhun, Manchester and Chaophraya, Liverpool. Wed 13-Sun 17 Apr

Thaikhun are celebrating Thai New Year (Songkran Festival) next week, and would love you to join them. Songkran is all about spending quality time with the ones you love, so if you dine at Thaikhun during Wed 13-Fri 15 Apr, you'll be in with a chance of winning a cooking school lesson for six people (Manchester, Aberdeen, Oxford, Cambridge) or a meal for six (Nottingham, Glasgow). Book now here. They'll also be celebrating on Sun 17 Apr at Chaophraya in Liverpool, where there will be tasty food and goody bags to give away, so don't miss out.

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Pure Joy album launch
Buyers Club, Liverpool. Sat 9 Apr, 7.30pm

Inspired by the likes of The War on Drugs, Kurt Vile, Tame Impala and classic psychedelia, Pure Joy are a psych-rock outfit from Wallasey, joining their many fellow Wirral-based acts in doing a good job of putting the peninsula on the map. They made their live debut last month supporting Flowers at Leaf, but now they're taking to Buyers Club to launch their debut LP, Bang Flower, released via the band's own Birkenhead-based label, Fresh Goods. Support comes from Beach Skulls and Fuss, along with a DJ set from Pink.

Animal Collective
O2 Ritz, Manchester. Wed 13 Apr, 7pm

Baltimore's electronic pop group Animal Collective are back, this time with their tenth studio album, Painting With – which, incidentally, was also our Album of the Month at the time of release, with a shiny four stars to its name. The making of the LP saw the band re-group as a three-piece (Josh 'Deakin' Dibb steps back for this one) to the result of some proper primal stuff, and the sound of 'a band refreshed'. Read our full review of Painting With here.

Photo: Atiba Jefferson

The 400 Blows
FACT, Liverpool. Sun 10 Apr, 6pm

If you thought 1960's À Bout de Souffle was a breath of fresh French New Wave air, prepare yourself for its earlier, underrated predecessor directed by Francois Truffaut. The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups in French) follows troubled schoolboy Antoine Doine, who skips class one day and becomes wound up in lies, thievery and consequence. People still harp on about Jean Seberg's iconic pixie crop, but it's this film that'll speak most to the disillusioned, the caged spirits and those fed up with the societal injustice that's still rife today.

Woody Allen-Ish
Manchester Jewish Museum, Manchester. Thu 7 Apr, 8.15pm

Comedy and jazz – a good partnership if ever there was one – team up this week with Woody Allen-Ish, which sees Simon Schatzberger recreate Woody Allen's iconic 60s stand-up comedy alongside his jazz singer sister, Julie, who'll be performing tunes from some of the director's classic films. Expect a double thwack of laughs from both the Allen jokes themselves and Schatzberger's impressively uncanny impersonations.

Other Worlds
Various venues, Blackpool. Thu 7-Sun 10 Apr, times vary

You've got a good excuse to hop on over to nearby Blackpool this weekend (just over an hour away from both Manchester and Liverpool) for the return of Other Worlds festival, which promises four days of fresh, experimental music and sound art. We're most looking forward to catching fiddle and recorder player Laura Cannell (pictured), noisemakers Gum Takes Tooth, a Tse Tse Fly-curated night at Bootleg Social and pedal steel guitarist Heather Leigh.

Photo: Stuart Moulding

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