With rare exceptions, writers are usually heard but not seen. Pete Straughan is one of those exceptions, says Steve Pratt.

PETER Straughan admits he was a terrible actor. He's having more success as a writer. A few years ago he was an unknown from Gateshead who decided to give up his part-time job and concentrate on writing.

Now he's seen his London play debut attract much critical attention, most of it good, and had the broadsheets queuing up to interview him. He's working on his first film script, the intriguingly-titled Five Psychopaths Go To Vancouver, and his new play is being premiered in a joint production between two of Newcastle's brightest companies, Northern Stage Ensemble and Live Theatre.

He's in danger of becoming that rare breed, the celebrity writer. With rare exceptions like Alan Bennett and David Hare, writers are usually heard but not seen. Forced out into the open, he risks being labelled the next Lee Hall. The description isn't that fanciful, as he was writer-in-residence at Live Theatre in 1999-2000, the same residency that helped launch Hall's career.

Now Billy Elliot, the award-winning film written by Newcastle-born Hall and set in the North-East, has been a hit on both sides of the Atlantic and has put the spotlight firmly on the region. "Billy Elliot changed things - that's undeniable," admits Straughan.

"If you come from the North you can be looking at the Oscars, which probably wasn't on the horizon before. There's always been a tradition of good writers from the region, like Tom Hadaway and Alan Plater. But the city has changed and there are much better opportunities, so it's a good time to be doing it. There have been culture changes and at the same time, Lee Hall was coming through."

Straughan's 1999 play Bones, his first professional commission and produced at Live, has enjoyed a successful run at Hampstead Theatre, London, recently. This black comedy, about a band of hopeless criminals who kidnap Reggie Kray, received good notices and raised his profile nationally.

He's taking this new-found fame in his stride, without necessarily liking it. "Things happen but you don't see the results straight away. You talk to people who are suddenly aware of your work," he says.

He returned to Newcastle from London, where he moved three years ago, for rehearsals of his latest play Noir, which, as the title hints, is an homage to the film noir genre.

Actors from both Northern Stage Ensemble and Live Theatre are being directed by Live's artistic director Max Roberts in this dark comedy about the tangled lives of a group of Tynesiders. Straughan calls Noir "a very dark comedy of errors".

It combines Live's commitment to new writing with the other company's more physical theatre. "It's lovely to be doing a combination of the two because it's the first time that's happened, and with Northern Stage you get the opportunity to use a large stage," says Straughan.

The themes of the piece emerged through talking with Roberts about the changes in the identity of the North-East over the past two decades. The pair also both share a love of old films in general and film noir in particular.

His interest in theatre began in the stage society at university where he admits to being "a terrible, terrible actor". Next he tried music. From the age of 17, he played in the folk punk band The Honest Johns for five years. "We tried desperately to be famous," he says. "We had a record deal and the company went bust, possibly as a result of us."

Writing for the stage gave Straughan the satisfaction acting and making music didn't. He'd first written during his student days, although he knew little about theatre. He educated himself by going into a second hand book shop, buying a play script and reading it. An early influence was Singer by North-East writer Peter Flannery. Arthur Miller, David Mamet and Howard Barker were others whose work he admired.

"Really it was what was in the bookshop that week. It was quite disparate," he says. "I was much more from a film background. We watched films and didn't go to the theatre. Because films felt like a different world, it didn't occur to me to write them. I knew you could put on plays."

Bones led to the offer to write a movie. The company had a script, Five Psychopaths Go To Vancouver, they didn't like. He was told he must keep the title but start again from scratch with the script. "I've really enjoyed doing that. And they seem keen to get going as soon as possible," he says.

The move from North to South doesn't seem to have affected his work. He thought that, perhaps, London audiences might not take to Bones. Quite the opposite happened. "Newcastle audiences were very raunchy. I thought, 'we're going to have problems with the language because it's pretty Geordie' but no one mentioned the accents."

He has not particular career plan, happy to flit between film and stage with maybe a bit of TV thrown in. He's not that fussy about the latter because "television was never an obvious medium to write for because I love film". A return to acting, though, is out of the question. "I would never be allowed," he says, recalling a walk-on part he took in his surrealist play The Ghost Of Frederico Garcia Lorca Which Can Also Be Used As A Table. "I thought I was great," he says, "but apparently not. Everyone said I was really terrible."

Noir is at Newcastle Playhouse from May 8 to 25. Tickets 0191-230 5151.