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Playwright Lee Mattison on his new play Steel and a brand new festival
It’s great to hear of new writing emerging and Theatre by the Lake’s inaugural new writing festival, CumbriaFest is just the place to find it. Steel is the headline production for the event, and after its premiere at TBTL in Keswick, the show will be touring into the theatres and community spaces of West Cumbria. We were delighted to get a chance to talk with playwright Lee Mattinson about this brand new production.
Hi Lee – thanks very much for talking to us today. So, CumbriaFest is a brand new festival showcasing new writing. How did you get to be headlining with Steel?
I’m not sure how it came to headline CumbriaFest but I do remember how it came into being – perhaps I’ll tell you a bit about that…?
I first met Liz Stevenson [AD of TBTL] at the Bruntwood Prize at Manchester’s Royal Exchange in 2019. My play Hares had been shortlisted and Liz had read it as part of the anonymous judging process. Something in the writing struck a chord with her and she invited me to Keswick where we floated the idea of working together. I shared an idea I had about two scrappy lads from Workington. Fast forward five years and we’re here in rehearsals for Steel.
It’s amazing to be premiering it alongside a raft of incredible Cumbrian talent and it’s been lush to meet some of the other artists involved. Me and Julie Carter from Dreamtime Fellrunner swapped marathon stories recently, and I’m really looking forward to Grace Kirby’s Nancy’s Orange which I saw an excerpt of at Open Space (Theatre by the Lake’s work-in-development event) in 2023 and was utterly captivated by.
Can you tell us what Steel is about?
Steel joins two seventeen-year-old lads, James and Kamran, on a wet and windy night in Workington. It’s a night when James discovers he is heir to one mile of the British railway system – a mile worth a cool million and one he can only lay claim to by finding the contract his great-great-great-grandad George signed with London & North Western in 1903. James and Kamran are catapulted on an adventure that would put The Famous Five to shame, during which they crash into a series of wild and wonderful characters that both help and hinder their town-wide treasure hunt.
You’ve set the play in small-town West Cumbria. What features and themes from the locality and its community have you drawn on in your writing?
I was born and raised in Workington and it’s a town still stinging from the de-industrialisation in the 80’s. Growing up, I was hyper aware I was living in the hangover of those days – the dispossession of its workers and a sense of community that evaporated with the steelworks. As a young person, I felt I had few choices and the starting point of the play came from the following wonder: what would a daft seventeen-year-old lad from Workington do if he had agency? If he had a sense of power he’d always craved? If he had a sudden million? It felt like a provocative place to start…
I did a lot of research into the steelworks for those first few drafts and we delivered a week of workshops in secondary schools across West Cumbria to identify how relevant the themes and ideas were for young people right now – I was aware that I was writing from the point of view of my own seventeen-year-old self which accidentally anchored things in 1997. I also ran a series of workshops with Anti Racist Cumbria to further develop the character of Kamran, and interviewed my Dad who was a steelworker in the 80’s and gifted me a terrifying anecdote about exploding seagulls.
Can you talk a bit about the cast and creatives involved? Jordan Tweddle had a great summer at the Edinburgh Fringe, I hear!
It’s a killer team with two brilliant actors at the heart of it.
Jordan Tweddle plays James and has been with the project from the start. He joins us from a glittering summer at the Fringe with Pillock his one-man-show which I was lucky enough to dramaturg on. I also recently wrote a short film Show Pony for his production company Knock & Nash so it’s a solid creative shorthand to be entering the rehearsal room with.
Suraj Shah plays Kamran and another nine characters – he’s required to be an absolute shapeshifter and Suraj delivers a masterclass. His ability to switch from seventeen-year-old lad to alcohol-addled auntie and sudden sensational drag superstar is a sight to behold and he’s brought a new energy and incredible insight to all ten characters.
There’s music at the core of the play and also a community choir. Can you tell us how the idea for that came about, and how it works with the touring production?
The community choir has been a highlight of the process.
At the end of the play, there’s a moment where a choir of ex-steelworkers and a chorus of drag queens join forces to perform a song. It had sat in the last few drafts without us thinking about how that moment could be played out theatrically. We decided earlier this year that a beautiful way to tell that final beat would be to form a community choir and have them co-create a song.
Over several months, we worked with about 30 people from across the West Coast to write a song responding to the themes of the play, a recording of which will be played across the run and on tour. For the final few dates at the Carnegie Theatre & Arts Centre in Workington, the choir will perform the song live, alongside the Carnegie Singers and (potentially) in costume…there’s been talk of sequins, wigs and work boots.
You’ve workshopped Steel both in West Cumbria but also at the National Theatre Studio, with a possible UK tour suggested for next year. How does this small-town story work in the context of both local and national perspectives?
In many ways the play is forensically specific – its singular sense of place, the mechanics of small communities and the escapades of two working class scamps.
These could all be seen as obstacles to a national audience. But it’s ultimately a very universal story: it asks questions about love, identity and class. It asks us what we value and it does it in the most Workington way possible – by telling hard truths honestly.
The young people at the school workshops told us it’s difficult to be ‘different’ in West Cumbria. The play asks, why? It puts unheard voices centre stage and allows the audience to view a scarred forgotten landscape with a technicoloured new gaze.
And finally, what are you hoping your audiences take away from the show?
I would hope that the audience answer the questions posed in the play in their own way. That they think about where their own values lie and how love – not money – can make us every day millionaires.
Thanks very much to Lee for taking the time to talk to us about this brand new piece of work.
Steel runs at Theatre by the Lake from Thursday 3 to Saturday 19 October. More information and details of how to book can be found here.
