Tyrell Williams was on a bus through London’s Elephant & Castle in 2018 when he noticed the football pitch he played on as a teenager had been built over. “It was an important place to me and my friends,” he says. The loss of it stirred up feelings of nostalgia, frustration and sadness – so much so that when Williams got back home he was moved to write. What he didn’t know then was that his anger would eventually result in an award-winning debut play.
Today Williams, 29, is sitting in the upstairs bar of Soho Place, the West End theatre where that play, Red Pitch, transfers on 15 March after two successful runs at west London’s Bush theatre, in 2022 and 2023. It is a big moment for Williams, who has dreamed of being a “storyteller” since he was a teenager reading out his work writing to his family.
