What are the themes of your play?
Morality, cross-generational feminism, masculinity, loneliness and sex, community and empathy. And love. Really, it’s a love letter.
Why did you write it and why now?
The Brenda Line is my first play, and I wrote it when I was signed off work and pretty much bedridden, waiting for surgery. At the time, my mam would call to reassure me and listen as I raged. She’d joined the Samaritans at 19, and I remember thinking she must’ve been brilliant at it, even at such a young age. She had told me about the Brendas years before, and I found myself researching them, surprised by how little information there seemed to be out there, and amazed by the quiet complexity of what they did – how led by compassion they were. I’d never had the time or money to just sit and write before, so it all sort of came tumbling out. Since then, I think the play’s themes have only become more pertinent as we collectively wrestle with isolation and its fallout, particularly amongst men. Our need for community has never been greater.
Which playwrights are you influenced by and why?
I think my strongest influences sit outside of playwriting: novelists like Max Porter, Shirley Jackson and Rita Mae Brown, bands like The Specials and Hot Chocolate, films like Harold and Maude and True Stories, my dreamy friends and the politicians who keep me up at night.
What do you hope to achieve as a playwright?
Joy. Plays that make people argue in the bar, afterwards. More stories about queer women. More stories about brown girls from the countryside. And a really, really good horror.