LPT: Jamie, delighted to have you back. Could you tell us a little about the early years you spent in London, the frustration and the eventual reason for leaving?

Jamie Eastlake: Where do I start with this? Those early days which genuinely feel lifetime ago were very special but also tarnished with a lot of sadness and regret. We did some amazing work and supported so many artists and helped breathe life into the start of so many careers and that’s really beautiful. The wheels came off in the end due to the worst of circumstances, we first lost our lease in Balham above the Bedford pub and moved to Tottenham Hale for a year where after a year the same thing happened due to redevelopment. That at the same time as Richard Jenkinson our Exec getting unwell and then sadly passing was the straws that broke the camels backs. It was a really hideous time in the end. I lost everything and owed so much money which at the time I blamed myself for but looking back was just a cruel set of circumstances. I went home and brushed myself down and paid off all the debt and then started all over again in my hometown.

Has it been easier to establish a permanent theatre in Newcastle?

Not one bit haha. It was an absolute slog and a complete labour of love which is what N16 was as well. But we saw a gap in the market for grassroots work and wanted to try and tear up the model in the region. And I think the noise we made showed that it can be done. But the difference is with London you have a captive audience, the industry is there. In the North East it takes more thinking about audiences which actually is a good thing. In London you’ll get an audience rocking up on a Tuesday night to see a one person where the creators trauma is dumped on everyone whereas up here they definitely won’t take that punt. My mantra with Laurels was always “How can you make something that someone can be convinced to come in and see when they’d just come in for a pint” Gerry & Sewell was the benchmark for this and we continued to produce work that had that pull where it felt a populist night out at the same time as sitting listening to emotional storytelling.

Bringing Gerry & Sewell to the West End coincides with The Stage naming Laurels, as one of three nominees for Fringe Theatre of the Year. What would it mean to you to win it?

My time with Laurels finished a year ago when I made the decision to step away from running fringe theatres. I had done the best part of 10 years of it and my body was feeling it and my family needed a better version of me. But to win it would be joyous and mean the world to me and everyone involved from when it started as an idea in Blyth in our first venture ‘Laurences’. The award nomination mentions the rise of Gerry & Sewell, the partnerships we forged with the National, the BBC and Seagulls and Sad Sad stories which won the Richard Jenkinson commission and saw Sarah Bond nominated for a Stage Debut Award. That legacy of its first few years and being nationally recognised is what will make Laurels move forward to hopefully continue to support as much grassroots work as it can for years and years to come. My last job was to ensure that it was set-up properly as a charity so it has the means, validity and good will to keep pushing the status quo.

Please could you tell us more about the origins of Gerry & Sewell?

My favourite film was ‘Purely Belter’ growing up. It’s about two young lads from absolutely nothing stopping at nothing to get season tickets for Newcastle United. They believe that if they get them they’ll be able to move up the social ladder “as all the posh businessman gan to the match”. I fell in love with it as it was the first time I’d ever seen anything on a screen which actually represented me and the people I grew up around. I read the book it was based on in 2015 and contacted Jonathan Tulloch the writer to actually stage it at Theatre N16 but another company had the option. It’s funny thinking back to what it would have been and represented in London, in that attic in Balham. Looking at its journey it all happened at the right time, a catalyst for driving audiences and noise to Laurels and a genuine opportunity to tell a story properly knowing exactly who we wanted the audience to be. It started in Laurels for a 3 week run where it sold out on word of mouth, we then brought it back for another 3 weeks a couple of months later and it did exactly the same. Then we transferred it to Live Theatre in Newcastle, where the first reads of Billy Elliot happened, where Pitman Painters started, the place where all Geordie drama has touched before it breaks the big time. That run went and sold out again and then Newcastle Theatre Royal came onboard, so its commercial potential and we ran to packed houses in a 1300 seater theatre last year.

Photography: Von Fox Promotions

Why is it important to you, to bring it to the West End?

Personally for me it’s how much the story of the play echoes my own journey. It’s about 2 lads from very little chasing a dream. I feel what Gerry and Sewell feel every day in this career. That means an awful lot to me. But bigger than that and bigger than me, is representation. We are that bit of the country that does get forgotten. Tucked up far away from them powers that be. Poverty stats that would make your eyes water. Constantly having to push back against stereotypes, classism etc.

How did it all happen?

It’s all mad. But this show is mad in the best way. I was adamant that Gerry & Sewell would be seen on a West End stage at some point so I have spent the last year talking about it. Meeting theatres, other producers, contacts. The plan was to come up for a night, do one show on top of another West End production and come back again saying “We did that” but a short residency became available last minute and the conversations started. Is it doable? Is it viable? Can you actually pull it off? I knew in my heart of hearts that I would have to make it work or I would regret it to the end of time. So a lot of wrangling, and I mean A LOT, had to happen. Finances, team building, learning the language of the West End.  All had to happen in a matter of weeks.  From that initial conversation to opening night was around 11 weeks. “That’s absolutely crazy”. “It’s impossible, it’s just not doable” “You’ve never produced a show on the West End, it just can’t happen” I’ve spent my career being told no and Gerry and Sewell are told no time and time again in the piece, my region is told no, the people in it are told no. No was coming off the table.

Remembering the early days at Theatre N16, you were regularly in the press as a kind of ‘angry young man’ with a mission to champion grass roots theatre (especially working class). How would you describe yourself these days?

Ha ha. A warm, snuggly, pillow of a human. I genuinely am one of the least angry people you can meet in person but there’s always going to be an anger inside because of class and opportunity, that’s just built into me. So that fire is definitely still there. But also a sort of centring that has come with age. Also I’ve broken myself so many times in supporting other people and now I’m at a point in my life where if someone isn’t going to work really hard then I’m not supporting them. So maybe bitter? Ha. No I think I’ve been at every level, worked on every side of the fence and seen just how hard people work to make things happen. The people at the top of big institutions, the ones who get shouted at by the young angry people, work tirelessly. There’s a reason they’re there. They have hard work in their bones. And I genuinely think that’s what separates those who do it and those who don’t. I’ll probably get loads of stick for this, but to make it in anything you have to work harder than anyone else. Like really hard. Because we don’t live in a lovely socialist Utopia, we live in a hard late stage capitalist society that is survival of the fittest. And to get a seat at the table, without stepping on others, you just have to work for it, ensuring that along the way you pull people up alongside you. I think after saying this out loud I’m actually now just an angry middle aged man!

Photography: Von Fox Promotions

In your early career as a director, you had many successes with your productions, including YOUR EVER LOVING by Martin McNamara (2016) and BOTTLENECK by Luke Barnes (2015). How have you built on that success?

I think they shaped me in terms of the way I wanted to make work and how I wanted to tell stories. I still remember Martin coming in for a meeting with me in Balham and I pitched the idea that I was going to stage his brilliant play in a circus tent in the theatre and combine all of the characters bar the lead into one clown-like monster. He was dumbstruck. But let me go with it- and it worked! I think that was the start of me trusting instinct as before I’d been second guessing everything. I met all these other makers and the majority I had zero social connection with, they were from totally different worlds and backgrounds. It was the realisation that actually the working class are the much better artists, they always have been and always will be. Because they’ve actually lived.

BOTTLENECK, has a similar story to GERRY & SEWELL, if we boil it down to how far a football fan will go to get a ticket to see his team.  Did you learn something from your production of BOTTLENECK that has fed into GERRY & SEWELL?

It’s so funny but me and Luke Barnes did some workshopping of a piece before the pandemic and he referenced Purely Belter (The film adaptation) as an inspiration but I’d actually never put two and two together until now. Funny how you can’t see the wood for the trees sometimes. I definitely learned that I had to make work that I could be completely absorbed into. As a director again I would second guess myself on what work to stage but Bottleneck was a piece I just loved so much and I understood and that came out in Will Mytum's performance in the trust he had with me and the piece. Finding that combo takes time and that’s what the Gerry & Sewell team have. They get it. They get how absorbed I am in it. And they trust every bizarre choice I throw at them. A nice Theatre N16 story after mentioning Will Mytum. He met Antonia Draper one of the theatres associates when doing the show and I went to their wedding last year and they’ve had a baby together. That for me is the lushest legacy of Theatre N16.

The strap line on your website is a quote from you in Newcastle Chronicle "GOING TO BREAK THE BIG TIME AND DO THE NORTH EAST PROUD."   How far have you come in realising than goal?

The “big time” changes every single day. If I was to talk to my 16 year old self who was adamant he was going to get into all of this, he would say you’ve done it. The chance to stand on the Albert Hall stage with the incredible Flesh and Bone team and lift that Olivier, to selling out a run at a 1300 seat theatre in my home city to opening a residency on the West End. That’s what dreams are made of and I’m so truly grateful for it all but I know deep down it’s come from a disgusting amount of hard work. 33 year old me is changing the goal posts again though, I want to sustain as a commercial producer, I want the catapult talent from our region, I want this just to be a seat at the table and the start of a relationship with the West End. It’s exciting but lots more hard work to come.

Finally, after sell-out runs of Gerry & Sewell in the North East, what do you think London audiences will make of it? 

I think they’ll see the universal message in it. The chasing a dream from nothing. The chaos and the ridiculousness of surviving on the breadline and what that does to human beings. But I think they’ll also see hope. Hope is all we can have. As dreamers and grafters and those from places who are told that “It’s impossible.”

GERRY & SEWELL comes to Aldwych Theatre 13 – 24 January 2026. Further information and tickets can be found here.