Writer and director Jonathan Brown on his new play Knife on The Table

We spoke to writer and director Jonathan Brown about the inspiration behind his new play Knife on The Table, the characters he's created and the growth of his theatre company Something Underground. Through the intense interweaving lives of a community of young Londoners, Knife on The Table explores ambition, poverty and identity as it follows the characters’ journeys on roads high and low. Augmented by live music from Fred Hills, and examining the circumstances that draw people towards violent crime, the play paints a picture of those whose options are limited and was created partly in partnership with anti-knife crime charity Ben Kinsella Trust. 

What inspired you to explore themes like ambition, poverty, and identity in Knife on The Table, and why are they important?

Knife on the Table was partly inspired by my previous work as a teacher with excluded young people in Bristol, through pupil referral units, working one-to-one for the Local Education Authority with excluded boys, children in care, and sick children outside of school often for mental health reasons, whilst also working with Samaritans, and  as a prison visitor/listener, alongside my personal experiences of street crime in the Bristol area.

It’s obviously very hard to sum up a set of very complex influences that drive this issue, but a blend of factors, such as poverty, disengagement from educational and creative activities, confused identity, oft-misguided ambition for the wrong goals, disenfranchisement, and lack of positive role models, all feed into (in my experience) a landscape of young people struggling to make good decisions, and being vulnerable to being groomed into becoming instruments of wider crime operators.

I met and listened to a lot of young people in trouble, getting deeper into trouble, and I wanted to tell us something of their stories with nuance, re-humanising them, and exploring their plight. This is a piece of fiction, but is driven by true tales and real people I have encountered.

How did you create the characters in the play, and what do you hope their stories will teach the audience?

Some of the characters are drawn from young people I have met, some of the stories are partly verbatim, and others emerged from a blend of personal experiences, imagination and the research I have done.

I want the stories told within Knife on The Table to help remind the audience that these are young people in trouble, struggling against multiple societal forces, young people who are three-dimensional, and not just the two-dimensional, dehumanised players that we often see portrayed.

Fred Hills’ live music plays a big part of the performance. How does the music add to the story?

Fred is a fantastic musician, a drummer, who will be providing live music and vibrant beats on stage during the performance, to link between scenes, but also to provide mood, energy and pace during the scenes. I love the film Birdman, which includes the music of wonderful jazz drummer Antonio Sánchez and his music throughout, with Sánchez appearing through the film, sometimes integral to a moment of plot and other times within an unexplained surreal moment. I wanted to borrow something of that idea. We’re really looking forward to working with Fred both within the performance and within the outreach workshops.

Tell us about the free workshops that you're running alongside the production, what makes them important?

Yes/ We are running a series of five free workshops for young people from across London, spending five whole days with wonderful street dance teacher Sunanda Biswas, with myself providing theatrical input, actors from the professional production, and musician Fred Hills.

They will also attend an immersive two hour knife crime prevention workshop with the Ben Kinsella Trust, and a one hour workshop with comic-creators Penificent, both exploring the subject of knife crime and it’s prevention.

All of this will culminate in a separate additional performance of their co-created work on the 29th of September at the Sands End Arts and Community Centre in Fulham. And, at the end of this performance, trophies will be awarded to the youth participants by another (Leicester-based) knife crime-prevention organisation, the Anton Akpom Achievement Foundation, and by Hollywood actor Dr Winston George Ellis MBE, thereby offering young people across London, a chance to look at creative ways to explore the issues, express their stories and experiences, engage in creative activities, and then be seen by their friends, families and communities in the culmination of their work and in a positive light.

We hope they’ll come away, excited to continue a life of creativity, and proud to show their communities what they can achieve.

What's your favourite line from the show?

Ooooh…. too many good lines to choose from! I’ll go with this exchange between Danny (who’s trying to get back into his off-the-rails son (Flint)’s life and extricate him from gang life), and Book, (Flint’s conscientious and hardworking childhood sweetheart, who’s trying to keep Flint out of her life!)

Danny: I did my time. I'm a gardener now, and...I volunteer. I'm completely straight. Getting there. You've grown. I remember when you were this high.

Book: I'm surprised you remember anything. Cos you were always “this high”.

How has Something Underground evolved since you founded it in 2006?

In 2006, I started with creating solo shows, written and performed by me, and this continued until 2011 when I produced my first play (The Well) for a larger cast. Since then Something Underground has been creating one man, one woman and ensemble plays that have touched many lives. I write and direct all of our plays. The work tends to be visceral and uncompromising text, character and plot driven works. Plays have been about (amongst other things) fatherhood, identity, trans issues, alcohol, childbirth, the origins of psychiatry, community, the tobacco industry, Victorian Brighton, greed and corruption, Regency Brighton, The Holocaust, ISIS, Iraq, the refugee crisis, radicalisation and Brexit, the modern history of the 60s and 70s, and more recently knife crime and gang culture. The plays ask the audience to use their imaginations. We use physicality to portray the worlds we inhabit, and very little in terms of props or set. Some of the work includes enhanced use of physical theatre (e.g. The Well), and some includes intensely interspersed multilayered verbal dialogue (e.g. The Last Lunch / Knife on The Table). My improvised work (e.g. Je Suis) uses an empty stage, the moment, and whatever beings inhabit the space to create fragile or robust worlds, where mysteries may or may not emerge.

Three of my plays have been published and since 2012 I teach (amongst other drama classes and one to one work) a course called "Grow Your Own Solo Show”.  We’ve been very lucky to receive multiple awards, nominations and shortlistings down the years.

More recently our work has attracted substantial Arts Council England funding (such as for Knife on the Table), and we’re therefore able to work with increasingly wonderful artistic collaborators, and run more ambitious projects that, we hope, continue to touch lives.

You can catch Knife on The Table at The Cockpit 5 - 26 October. More information and how to book tickets HERE