PADDY Campbell’s play Wet House returns to Newcastle’s Live Theatre next month, but the playwright hasn’t been resting on his laurels following his debut full-length piece being named as one of the Guardian’s top ten plays of last year. As he revealed at the launch of Live’s autumn season, he has plenty of ideas for new plays in various stages of development.

Campbell, originally from Northern Ireland, completed Live’s introduction to playwriting course in 2007 and has since worked with the company, writing short pieces and helping to run projects for young writers.

Wet House, again directed by Live’s artistic director Max Roberts with many of the same cast, follows an idealistic young graduate who gets a job in a homeless hostel where residents are allowed to drink alcohol. It was based on Campbell’s own experience of working in such a hostel.

“I’m really looking forward to that, I can’t wait.

It had such a great cast as well and it will be really fun to be in contact with all those guys again and take it to new audiences,” he says of the production which tours to Hull and London’s Soho Theatre after Newcastle.

He has several plays in development, including Day Of The Flymo, based on an idea that stemmed from working for the past eight years in a residential children’s home in Newcastle. He’s learnt a lot about the referral of children in care, including one section that gives parents responsibility for their children even though they’re in care.

“It’s a very grey area and confusing situation. I was interested to write a play based around those issues. Class plays a big part in the decisions as well. So it’s interesting territory to write about,” he says.

“The whole thing centres on two young kids stealing a lawn mower, and the offshoot of that.

It’s going to be a mixed cast of professional and youth theatre actors. It’s a really good opportunity for some of the youth theatre actors to work alongside more experienced actors.”

He’s returning to his homeland with the setting of a play of The Blessed which he was prompted to write it after learning that after the ceasefire that the suicide rate “went through the roof ”.

“What people put a lot of it down to is that a lot of people, especially among young men, feel they’ve lost their identity. There was this enemy kind of thing and the peace process has pulled the rug from under their feet,” he says.

Then he discovered something else – that a play “pretty much about the same thing” had already been done, but sees his take on the situation as completely different. “What I thought would be interesting to look at were prisoners released under the Good Friday agreement and how they then tried to adjust to this new order in Northern Ireland. So it’s essentially a family drama about a prisoner released under that agreement,” he says.

Campbell grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s so the first time he got to vote was in the Good Friday agreement. “Bangor where I lived was relatively quiet compared to other areas, but was bombed twice and growing up at that time it was a daily part of life. I’ve lived in Newcastle now for 13 years so it’s interesting to look back at that period,” he says.

“Another reason for writing that play is that I’ve only actually ever written about Geordies. It was really strange when I started putting pen to paper writing Northern Irish characters. I was questioning whether I could do it, or not despite being from there because I’ve been so used to writing for actors from Newcastle. My parents live over here now, so I don’t get back to Northern Ireland very often.”

The timeline is loosely based on someone who, after being released, used to drink in the bar where Campbell’s sister worked although the play isn’t his story. Campbell is currently on his third draft. “When we did Wet House at Live I got some of the cast round my house for tea and did a read of it,” he recalls.

HE has yet another play, as yet unwritten, in mind. This will be set on a ship in the Tyne, an idea sparked by the abandonment of a vessel in the Newcastle dock. “In ports all around the world there are merchant navy ships that are owned under flags of convenience so it’s very difficult to trace who owns them. Quite often when these ships are found to be unseaworthy it can be easier for the owners just to abandon them, leaving the crew stranded.

“And that crew will invariably be Filipino, African or Eastern European, very deprived areas of the world. You have a situation where the crew is stranded and if they leave the ship they know they definitely won’t get paid. So they have to sit it out and wait and hope for the best. I thought it’s a metaphor for a wider global social politics – it’s quite apt these guys from third world countries have accepted jobs and ended up as charity cases here.”

Campbell points out he has experience of the merchant navy. Not only was his dad a merchant seaman, but young Paddy actually went to sea.

“When I was 14, I was expelled from school and the next school that was going to take me wasn’t going to have me for quite a while so my punishment, as it was, was to go and work at sea – which was great.”

  • Wet House: Newcastle Live Theatre, Sept 17- Oct 11. Box Office: 0191-232-1232 and live.org.uk