Tyrell William’s debut play, Red Pitch, is set on an inner-city football pitch in South London, which is surrounded by scaffolding recently erected to build new blocks of flats. The pitch and the neighbourhood are on the brink of change from urban regeneration, and the three teenage boys who we meet on this pitch are facing displacement from their homes as well as their own life-defining choices. Red Pitch is a coming-of-age story, with young men fighting to believe in their dreams, and to find a way up, and perhaps out, of their changing community. It is a universal story of hope and ambition, friendship and family, set in a community that has traditionally seldom been portrayed or celebrated in our theatres.
I’m very excited to have the opportunity to talk in this episode with the author of Red Pitch, Tyrell Williams, and the director of the award-winning production of the play at the Bush Theatre in West London, Daniel Bailey. The play had a wonderful reception when it was first performed at the Bush in February 2022, when it won the Off West End Award for Best New Play, as well as several awards for Tyrell, including the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards for Most Promising Playwright, as well as the Stage magazine Debut Award for Best Writer. We recorded this episode during the revival of the show in September 2023. The show’s much deserved success continued with a transfer of the Bush production to the Soho Place Theatre in London’s West End in April 2024.
