Olivier-winning theatre maker Jamie Eastlake: 'The North East is on the verge of 90s Manchester'

“My mum and dad brought me as a really massive treat to see Joe Pasquale in the pantomime at Newcastle Theatre Royal one Christmas. I’ve got a tattoo of Peter Pan on my arm because of that moment.”

Meet Jamie Eastlake, Olivier award-winning theatre writer-director-producer from Blyth in Northumberland. Not only is he a vital voice in new theatre, but he is living proof of the benefits arts education and access to the arts can bring for working class people.

Eastlake now runs the Laurels – a fringe theatre and nightspot in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside – while continuing his work as a playwright and director. The Laurels is a quietly radical proposition – combining a welcoming bar and venue for nights out with a theatre. It was set up in a 120-year-old social club, with a focus on telling new stories from marginalised or underrepresented groups, and amplifying working class voices.

He founded The Laurels, which recently obtained charitable status, with comedy writer Steve Robertson in 2021. Their first production was Jamie Eastlake’s adaptation of Gerry & Sewell, based on hit 2000 film Purely Belter, and this week it is opening at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. When Big Issue calls, Eastlake and the actors are deep into rehearsals. Barry Manilow is belting out in the background. It is, he says, a lively production.

“It all feels a bit surreal working here,” says Eastlake. “My earliest memory of the stage was seeing that pantomime. Something just clicked.” He even has a pen carved from a fragment of the old stage that he bought during lockdown. “It was the boards that were on when I came to see Peter Pan. A woodworker bought them when it was renovated and made them into pens. So I had to have it.”

Having grown up in Blyth, where his grandma was a choreographer for the local am dram group, Eastlake would see plenty of amateur shows as a youngster. But a career in the theatre was not on his radar until a government scheme brought the theatre into his school.

“The government’s flagship arts program at the time was Creative Partnerships,” he says. “Our drama department was literally an old sports hall that wasn’t used any more, which had a cupboard in it with a wheelchair and three hats inside. It was so underfunded,” he recalls. “Then came Creative Partnerships, which brought practitioners into our really rundown high school. And they developed a performance with us based on The Alchemist by Ben Jonson and the Paulo Coelho book of the same name. We went to the Sage, Gateshead – and that was the moment, at 14 years old, where I was like: right, this is a career that I really want.”

What happened next? A change of government. And a period of “a vandalism of the arts and violent indifference to areas of the country that are becoming arts deserts,” according to Lisa Nandy, the new secretary of state for culture, media and sport at last week’s Labour Party conference.

Jamie Eastlake agrees. “That was the first thing that was cut. One of the first Tory policies was to get rid of Creative Partnerships. I was incredibly lucky to be there at the end of that amazing program, because it doesn’t exist now. That’s 14 years of kids from working and benefit class backgrounds who’ve missed out on that access.”

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Does he see hope ahead? While Nandy showed more love for the arts, and a curriculum review instigated by education secretary Bridget Phillipson promising to put music, drama and the arts back at the heart of learning, there were few concrete promises of cash to ensure it happens.

“Everything they are saying seems spot on. So you hope with education at the heart of it, and tackling the grassroots and the core of the issue with the arts, there are positives. It can’t get any worse that it’s been.”

How hard has it been? For Jamie Eastlake it has been tougher than most. It’s been a struggle. “There have been so many knockbacks,” he says. He ran the N16 theatre in London for five years – but the company faced homelessness three times. When the lease was terminated in their final venue, because the land was sold to developers, that was the end. The following year, his business partner Richard Jenkinson died tragically young following illness. Eastlake was in mountains of debt and had to move back in with his parents in the north, and his mental health suffered.

“I’ve taken so many risks to get here that so many people from my background would not have been able to take because it knacks your mental health,” he says. “A few years ago there was this barrage of crap. My business partner was terminally ill and passed away, we lost our theatre, and I was left penniless. I was so lucky my mum and stepdad let me come back.

“I went to Liverpool to develop some work and my mind just went – I was under that much pressure. It says I had a psychotic episode on my file. I had to reset. And I didn’t have the cushion to save myself. And the money I owed was to artists, and everything I’d set up was to help artists, so it was an awful time. I worked so hard to pay off the debt, selling boilers, working in an Italian restaurant and at the golf club I’d worked in as a kid. And I paid it off. Then a play I produced, Flesh and Bone, won an Olivier Award. And that was the turning point.”

Why did he stick with theatre? Because the obsession that began with Peter Pan and Joe Pasquale, grew and thrived when Creative Partnerships provided funds for actors and theatre makers to come to his school continues to burn brightly. And also because of his determination that working class voices must be heard.

“I’ve got that old-school working-class mentality – it sounds like a cliché, but my grandad was on the shipyards and he was a hard, hard man. So I’ve got a bit of that, mixed with not being afraid of risk,” he says.

“It’s just hideous at the minute. Everyone’s fighting for the same pots of money. Everyone’s looking at Arts Council grants, but we’ve had something like 17 rejections on the bounce. The time and effort that goes into them is obscene.

“Everyone I ask around this region – it just seems that there’s no hope at the minute. A lot of it comes from the pandemic. The Cultural Recovery Fund was a good thing, and my organisation benefited from it, but I don’t think there was a trickle down effect to artists. So we’re feeling that pinch now.”

Jamie Eastlake is more positive when it comes to the impact of The Laurels in Whitley Bay and the surrounding area.

“Our mission was to bring quality, small-scale, professional stuff to audiences, very much representing lower socio-economic voices,” he says. “We’re trying to develop artists in North Tyneside artists as well.”

Eastlake is not alone in understanding that one way to entice new and wider audiences into theatres is to use stories they can relate to. A mixture of football and politics plays out in Gerry & Sewell, just as it did in Love It If We Beat Them, which played at the Northern Stage in September. That show starred David Nellist from last year’s production of I, Daniel Blake, in a story of the memorable 1996-97 season of political and football change, and is named after Kevin Keegan’s infamous post-match interview about Manchester United.

“It’s a way in for audiences, isn’t it?” says Eastlake. “Putting the national sport on stage is something I’ve been keen to do for a long time. And look at Dear England. Red Pitch at the Bush. Football is a fascinating background to storytelling.”

Culture is thriving here. Finding its way through the cracks. Down the road, Live Youth Theatre are just back from a festival in Germany with their new work Fed Up – which investigates food poverty in a play devised with the young people at the free drama workshops they provide, and has been performed at the Newcastle United Foundation and Newcastle Cathedral. And Open Clasp Theatre Company, whose join CEO and artistic director Catrina McHugh MBE joined John Bird on the panel at the recent Big Debate in Newcastle, has been working with women excluded from the theatre, life and society for a quarter of a century as they vow to change the world, one bold, political play at a time.

Take the Metro to Sunderland and you’ll find a similar story of struggle and success. The Fire Station has opened, a beautiful new cultural space for live music and theatre, with Will Young, The Undertones, John Grant, Dom Joly and the Royal Northern Sinfonia all on the bill in October. Pop Recs continues to be a place of music and community – honouring the image of its inspirational co-founder Dave Harper. And the Sunderland Empire, where Wicked has just opened, offers high quality entertainment alongside community programmes all year round.  

“I genuinely think the North East is on the verge of a sort of 90s Manchester thing,” says Eastlake. “When you look at the music scene – with people like Sam Fender, Fulwell Studios [a huge film and television studio] opening in Sunderland, the DJ scene with Patrick Topping and Ben Hemsley and Schak, it just feels like we are on the precipice of something. Something is in the air at the minute. It really feels like that. The Football clubs are doing well as well.

“I don’t think my voice or the voice of working people in the North East is represented enough on stage and screen in the country. I feel like this is a group that does get looked down upon, but we’ve got stories to tell that are rich.”

This week sees Gerry & Sewell at the Theatre Royal – with quite a cast under Jamie Eastlake’s watchful eye.

“We’ve got Bill Ward, who is a seasoned actor from Newcastle who has done it all. He was on Coronation Street for years [as baddie Charlie Stubbs] and he brings this level of professionalism I can barely describe. He’s a gem,” says Eastlake.

“And we’ve got Michelle Heaton as well – from a Gateshead council estate, via Liberty X. She feels so close to the story in this. She was a pop star, has been through some struggles, and is showing she can do serious, thought-provoking roles on stage. Dean Logan, Jack Robertson and Becky Clayburn have been on this journey with us from the start, and Erin Mullin is going to be a complete superstar. She has links to the Theatre Royal thought the training scheme and has just been in a Netflix film. It’s such a lush room to be in. So positive. And everyone gets it because they are all from the region.”

With the arts continuing to offer hope despite the times, Jamie Eastlake remains optimistic. His journey has been a struggle. But he’s here. And he’s doing vital work.

“Anyway,” he says, “it’s times of strife when the best art is made, isn’t it?”

Gerry & Sewell is on until October 5 at Theatre Royal, Newcastle.

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