Tyrell Williams Archives - The Play Podcast

Tyrell Williams

by Douglas Schatz | Sep 27, 2023 | Contributor

Tyrell Williams

Tyrell Williams is the award-winning author of Red Pitch, which premiered at the Bush Theatre in February 2022. The play won the Off West End Award for Best New Play, as well as the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards for Most Promising Playwright, as well as the Stage magazine Debut Award for Best Writer.

Tyrell previously co-created, co-wrote and directed the viral web-series #HoodDocumentary, which has had over 4 million YouTube views, and went on to be commissioned for BBC Three. Tyrell is currently on attachment to the National Theatre Studio, and a screen adaptation of Red Pitch is in the works, as well as other TV projects.

Podcast Episode(s)

067 - Red Pitch by Tyrell Williams

Recommended Play(s)

Tyrell recommended Misty by Arinzé Kene.

067 – Red Pitch by Tyrell Williams

by Douglas Schatz | Sep 27, 2023 | Podcast Episodes

Red Pitch at The Bush Theatre
September 2023
Photo by Helen Murray

067 – Red Pitch by Tyrell Williams

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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.

Tyrell Williams

Recommended Play

Tyrell recommended Misty by Arinzé Kene.

Daniel Bailey

Daniel Bailey is a director, dramaturg and writer, is currently the Associate Artistic Director at the Bush Theatre, where he directed Tyrell William’s play Red Pitch. Daniel has previously been the Associate Director at Birmingham Rep Theatre, Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio, Associate Artist at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre.

Recommended Play

Daniel recommended A Season in the Congo by Aimé Cesairé.

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.