Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Neil Ainger talks to journalist and playwright Jeff Brown about his new play
Image by Wycombe 89 Media
“It’s a boy-meets-girl story, but I’m hoping it appeals on so many more different levels than that,” says Jeff Brown on his new play, The Bench. Touring the region throughout May and June, The Bench is described as a moving and humorous play about love, loss and football. “Everybody tells writers to write about what they know about, and football’s been my life since I was a kid, really. Forty years of reporting on it, fifty years of following it.”
Jeff Brown is a mainstay on TV screens in the North East and Cumbria for more than 20 years as part of BBC Look North, and has established a career as a journalist spanning more than forty years. Jeff’s has been reporting on news and sport in the region for almost all of his adult life, until stepping down last year in favour of pursuing other projects. “I wanted to leave while I still had the health and the energy to do other things. I knew this was going to take up a lot of my time, and it really has.”
Originally developed in 2018 at a scratch night at The Peacock, Sunderland, the play tells the story of Vicky, a single mum living on the breadline, caring for her sick mother and struggling with the pressures of day-to-day life, and Adi, a young footballer, born in Africa and raised in France, who is struggling to get his career off the ground while also finding himself the subject of racism. The two characters, from completely different backgrounds and facing vastly different challenges, have a chance meeting on a park bench and find they have more common ground than they may have expected.
if it can have a lasting impact beyond just the people who come to see it in the theatre then that would be really humbling.”
“I’m a patron of Sunderland Carers. I have been for about the last four or five years now and I was a carer myself in a way, for my mum who had motor neurone disease for the last 18 months of her life. I know what carers go through and the problems they face,” explains Jeff, in regards to the inspiration behind the themes of the play. His career as a sports journalist; interviewing, reporting on and telling the stories of countless footballers obviously serves as appropriate inspiration for the character of Adi, his experiences at a professional football club, and the pressing issue of racism within the game.
Not satisfied with simply representing the issue within the confines of his play however, Jeff has admirably arranged to take the anti-racism message into local schools. “When we decided we were going to take it out on the road, we got in touch with [North Shields based anti-racism campaign and charity] Show Racism The Red Card and they were really keen to get involved. Between The Gala Theatre, Durham, who are co-producing, and Show Racism The Red Card, they’ve produced an education pack based around scenes from the play which is going to be taken around a number of schools in the area. When I started writing it, it was something I did because I enjoyed it and I thought it was an interesting piece. But with the way it’s developed, if it can have a lasting impact beyond just the people who come to see it in the theatre then that would be really humbling.”
The Bench does not require a knowledge or even an interest in football, and focuses on shared experiences, life’s ups and downs and the universal struggle of finding one’s own place in the world. The play stops in at 17 venues for 29 performances across the region between Thursday 22nd May and Saturday 21st June.
