Say Owt brings a cabaret night to York Theatre Royal

York Theatre Royal has a bit of a double life. By day it is the grand 750-seat house on St Leonard's Place that has been running since 1744, built on the remains of a 12th-century hospital with a Roman spring still flowing under the stage. By night, its Studio turns into something else entirely. On Friday 23 October, the Say Owt Showcase takes over the room as part of The Old Paint Shop season, which reimagines the Studio as a cabaret club for the evening. Doors open at 19:30, the show starts at 20:00, seating is unreserved, and tickets are £15 plus a booking fee.

Say Owt has been pulling together poetry, music and comedy for more than a decade, and the showcase bills itself as veering from the righteous to the raucous to the heartfelt and back again. The line-up reads like a who's who of the northern spoken-word scene: Hannah Davies, Stu Freestone, Jarmouse (Bram Jarman) and Henry Raby, all Edinburgh Fringe veterans and all Highly Commended at the York Culture Awards. It is a mixed bill in the truest sense, so it is worth knowing who is actually stepping up to the mic.

Hannah Davies is a slam-winning poet from Yorkshire who trained as an actor at Mountview and holds a PhD in playwriting; she has taken home titles at the Great Northern Poetry Slam, the Bristol Poetry Festival Slam and Word War Four, and has been a finalist at the BBC EdFringe Slam and the Hammer and Tongue National Slam. Stu Freestone, a York-based poet and co-founder of Say Owt, has been performing across the UK since moving here in 2005, and when he is not on stage he works as a cheesemonger at The Cheese Trader on Grape Lane. Jarmouse, the stage name of Bram Jarman, is a poet, playwright and musician who has been a fixture at high-energy nights of verse since 2014. And Henry Raby, now known as poet laureate Vandal Factory Raby, co-founded the collective with Freestone back in 2014.

That collective has spent the last decade playing everywhere from The Basement at City Screen Picturehouse to The Crescent, St Mary's Church and the Edinburgh Fringe, and it now runs as a tight group of associate artists. The showcase is the centrepiece of their autumn programme, but it is not the only stop. If you miss it, Say Owt keeps going: Michael Rosen with Cory Rich plays The Citadel on Gillygate on 10 November, and Len Pennie with No Dry Eyes Poetry takes over rise @ Bluebird Bakery in Acomb on 5 December. For one night, though, the whole gang gathers at the Theatre Royal, and the unreserved seating means you can pick your own spot in the Studio and let the evening wander wherever it wants.