Five Minutes With... Wor Bella Playwright Ed Waugh
We chat with local playwright Ed Waugh about his latest play Wor Bella
From 27th-28th April, Wor Bella is taking over the stage at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal. Penned by local playwright Ed Waugh, the one-woman play follows the story of Bella Reay – the star player of Blyth Spartans Ladies, a female football team formed by women working in munitions factories during World War I.
Starring talented County Durham-born actress Catherine Dryden (and featuring a to-camera cameo from football legend Alan Shearer!), the play is a celebration of women’s football, women’s rights and often forgotten heroes of history.
Ahead of its run at the Theatre Royal, we caught up with Ed to find out more about the story behind Wor Bella and what audiences can expect from the play.
Tell us more about Wor Bella. What inspired you to write the play?
As with all my plays, it’s about ordinary working-class people doing extraordinary things. It’s an incredible story because these women – the Munitionettes, as they were called – saved the war effort. It’s inspirational but it’s sad too. It’s not just about football – it’s about women’s rights as well.
When conscription was introduced in 1916, millions of women moved into the munitions factories. They worked long, hard hours and their jobs were dangerous but they had money in their pockets for the first time. For the first time in history, this cohort of working-class women had financial independence. They had their hair fashioned and wore fashionable clothes – sometimes even ‘men’s clothes’ like trousers which was unheard of! They even went to the pubs unaccompanied by men and would go in after work and drink them dry in some places!
It was a liberating time and because they were free, they started taking up football. With men leaving for war, there was a huge void in entertainment and it was filled by women who started playing football to raise money for wartime charities helping widows, orphans and wounded soldiers.
In Northumberland, the local Munitionettes formed Blyth Spartans Ladies whose matches were attended by tens of thousands of people. Their top dog was Bella Reay who scored 133 goals in 30 matches – she was basically the Alan Shearer of her day!
But then after the war, women were told to go back into the home – become baby machines, look after men. They were forced to take a step back. They saved the war effort completely but they were completely disenfranchised. There are no monuments to them – they were completely written out of history.
The worst thing was – and Wor Bella takes this on too – is that the Football Association banned women’s football in 1921. It wasn’t until 50 years later in 1971 that the ban was lifted. It’s an absolute scandal and the play takes up all these things and issues through the eyes of Bella Reay.
How did you go about researching Bella Reay and the Blyth Spartans? Was it difficult given that 100 years have passed since the events of Wor Bella took place?
It was difficult, yes. The Munitionettes didn’t talk about their exploits after their withdrawal from the workplace. These women were teenagers for the most part and they were superstars in their places of work, villages and towns and then they were just thrown out of work. They must have been quite humiliated and they tended not to talk about it, so the research was very difficult.
But I was very fortunate that the Blyth newspapers covered all of the Spartans Ladies’ games and the Blyth historian Gordon Smith gave me all his research on women’s football in the town which was incredible.
Just as female footballers of today stand on the shoulders of these women footballers from 100 years ago, I stand on the shoulders of historians. Without the research that they’ve done, I couldn’t do what I do.
What convinced you Catherine Dryden was perfect for the role of Bella Reay?
Catherine is fantastic. She’s RADA-trained and she did a play for Trevor Wood and me about Grace Darling called Amazing Grace when she was in her teens and she was brilliant - you knew she was going to be something special. That was about 12 years ago and she’s since toured with productions like The Pitmen Painters and The Play That Went Wrong, and more recently she’s been working with Jimmy Nail at Live Theatre with his new play Seconds Away.
I actually bumped into Catherine at Christmas at the Cathedral last year which I wrote a sketch for and where she sang with Jimmy Nail. I was really chuffed that we met up again - it was fate, you know? She’s absolutely brilliant and she’s going to be fantastic in Wor Bella.
How did you manage to nab Alan Shearer for a cameo?
We were actually brought up on the same council estate and because Bella Reay was known as the Alan Shearer of her day, I asked Alan and he was happy to do it. He’s been a brilliant supporter.
He didn’t ask for anything in exchange, so we’re selling Wor Bella programmes for £5 and every penny will go to the Alan Shearer Foundation as a thank-you to him.
Is it challenging putting on a one-woman show?
There are a lot of challenges with a one-hander. If you’ve got five people on stage and an audience member’s mind wanders or they don’t like one character, you can get their attention back but with a one-person play, you’ve got to have focus all the time.
Wor Bella is a one-woman play and the script is all well and good but you need a top actress and you also need a top director. The director is a guy called Russell Floyd. He was in Eastenders and The Bill for a long time so people will recognise him. He lives in Brighton but he’s an adopted Geordie. He directs all my plays and he’s a phenomenal director.
What do you love about staging plays at the Theatre Royal?
This is the fifth play that I’ve had on at the Theatre Royal which is a record for a local writer. It’s the one theatre you aspire to if you’re from the North East and I’m fortunate that I’ve had five plays on there.
It would’ve been six, as my play Carrying David was going to run there in April 2020, but some little bug came around and put a stop to that! We’re hoping to get Carrying David on again there though.
The whole team at Theatre Royal are great. They’re just a joy to work with – they’re so professional.
You’re known for penning plays about little-known local heroes. What can we expect from you next?
It looks like my play Hadaway Harry will be touring again next year and we’ve got a play coming up at the end of the year that’s touring nationally and going to the likes of The Glasshouse and the Playhouse Whitley Bay and all over the region.
It’s about the Cramlington Train Wreckers, a group of miners who were on strike during the 1926 General Strike and set out to derail what they thought was going to be a coal train that was undermining the strike. It turned out to be a passenger train – the Flying Scotsman, in fact – with 281 people on board. Luckily, only one person was injured and nobody died!
It’s an incredible story and it’s coming up to the centenary of the General Strike in May 2026, so it’s very timely. It’s what we do – plays about forgotten Geordies who did extraordinary things.
Wor Bella runs from 27th-28th April at Newcastle Theatre Royal. Tickets cost from £10 and are available to purchase at www.theatreroyal.co.uk.
