WRITING plays can be a hazardous business.

To get my play Riot written and on stage saw me trekking through the wild mountains of Yemen, combatting local resistance in South Shields, and sweet-talking people that the subject matter wasn't too sensitive, the subject matter being West-Muslims relations as seen through the lens of the 1930 Yemeni seamen's riot in South Shields.

One man who did want a play was Ray Spencer, director of the town's Customs House, who commissioned me to write it. Outside of Ray, few people knew anything about the riot, me among them.

I wasn't exactly sure where Yemen was, nor the name of its capital.

But the task sent me off on a three-year physical and mental journey. This had such a profound effect, I wrote both the play and a book about my Yemeni travels.

I found the play difficult to write, reinforced when leaders of the local Muslim community informed me they were nervous and would rather the play didn't go on. Also, a regional ethnic documentary maker was openly hostile to a white writer taking on such a project.

I decided to go to Yemen. The advice from the foreign office was to stay at home. Yemen, they said, was highly active Al Quaeda territory, where Westerners were regularly kidnapped, held to ransom, and sometimes killed. I knew no Arabic, and had no contacts in the country. It took five months to get a visa, but finally I went off in search of the ancestors of the young seamen who'd made the long journey to South Shields. Nor were the Brits at the highly fortified British Embassy in San'a, the capital, much more helpful - their displeasure at my foragings only lightly disguised.

Contrast this lack of support with the Yemenis themselves who for several weeks openly offered the most amazing hospitality to a total stranger. In the remote mountain village of Maqbanah, they laid on a feast, gave me presents, and the local sheik asked if I needed any money. This in one of the poorest Arab countries.

Despite resistance, the play opened in October 2005. By the week's end, the theatre was full, and the reviews enthusiastic. Since that time the South Shields Yemenis have been featured on the BBC TV programme Coast and in a recent exhibition at The Baltic, Gateshead.

Now the play is to be revived at the Customs House, with an accompanying exhibition by photographer Pete Fryer. It's also been invited to the Liverpool Arabic Arts festival as part of that city's Capital of Culture programme. The text is to be published bi-lingually (English/Arabic), and Unison have sponsored the Liverpool production to the tune of £5,000.

But how did the riot, know as Britain's first race riot, come about?

Late 19th and early 20th Century Britain, with an expanding merchant navy hungry for labour, had welcomed the dependable, non-drinking Arab seamen to South Shields, Cardiff and Liverpool. By shipping out from Aden, the British protectorate in South Yemen, these seamen could claim British citizenship, making the process easier.

By the 1920s, with a depression looming, and local post-war sailors returning from the Royal Navy often to find their previous merchant navy jobs now taken by aliens, the Arab seamen became the scapegoats. Tensions grew, and the top blew on an August day when white and Yemeni seamen clashed at Mill Dam - the site of the present Customs House. Bones were broken, a police officer stabbed and almost two dozen Yemenis eventually deported.

Modern-day parallels are obvious, and the play has something to say about the modern UK. The cast is part Western, part Arab, the style semi-naturalistic, there's a good deal of humour, two scenes in Arabic with subtitles, and director Darren Palmer is third-generation Yemeni. One day I dream of taking the play to Yemen.

■ Riot opens at The Customs House, South Shields, June 11, tel: 0191-4545450