Billy Elliot writer's new play swaps West End for church hall in County Durham

The Guardian

06-03-2025

His plays have been buzzy, hot-ticket openings in the West End and at the National Theatre. Films he has written have had glitzy debuts in Cannes and Venice.
But for the next world premiere of a Lee Hall show, head to the Methodist church in a former mining village in County Durham.
Hall's new adaptation of one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, Brecht's anti-war classic Mother Courage and Her Children, is to be the inaugural production of one of Britain's youngest and most interesting theatre companies.
The play will open at Horden Methodist church in May, the first production of a new venture called Ensemble '84, which is a sister company to the internationally acclaimed Isango Ensemble.
Isango was co-founded by the British theatre director Mark Dornford-May 25 years ago in one of South Africa's most deprived places, the sprawling Khayelitsha township on the edge of Cape Town.
Its mission is to give opportunities to people who don't have them, to train people who live in townships to a professional standard and give an artistic voice to a part of the world that doesn't have one.
The mission in Horden is the same. Day-to-day life in the townships and east Durham may be very different, but the similarities are still striking, said Dornford-May.
'A lot of the issues are very similar in terms of lack of opportunity, lack of expectation, lack of a sense that these communities actually have any ownership over the arts whatsoever.
'All those things are the same. They're exactly the same to be honest. Having a lack of opportunities to express what they feel about the world through art.'
Hall is a screenwriter and playwright with a stellar CV which includes Billy Elliot, The Pitmen Painters, stage adaptations of the films Shakespeare in Love and Network, and screenplays for the films Victoria & Abdul and Rocketman.
He first translated Mother Courage more than two decades ago but this is 'a completely updated version', Hall said, written especially for the new Ensemble '84 production.
The north-east cast was assembled after a call-out on social media and working with local job centres.
'I wanted to make sure that no one couldn't have a go,' said Dornford-May. 'We auditioned and saw close to 200 people of all different ages. The only requirement was you had to live in County Durham and be over 18.'
Those recruited have been paid the minimum wage while being trained to become actors. When rehearsals start in April they will be paid Equity rates.
The new show will also feature actors from Isango creating a company of 19. 'Apart from West End musicals and maybe the RSC and the National who else is putting that many people on a stage nowadays?
'It is exciting on so many levels but daunting as well because we want to make it work.'
Hall said Mother Courage was one of the most important plays of the 20th century, 'and widely seen as one of the greatest plays ever written about the cost of war.
'Not just because it focuses on the little people – the victims of war. But it also examines how we are all corrupted by its values.
'Although Brecht wrote it about the thirty years' war in the 17th century, sadly, it's as relevant now as it was when it was written. It could just as easily be about what's happening in Ukraine this week.
'It's brutal, immediate, but full of characters we recognise. It's a play anybody can understand and probably see themselves in it. I am thrilled it's happening in Durham.'
Mother Courage and Her Children runs at Horden Methodist church 14-24 May.