From pub job and PlayStation to writing an award-winning play

Nathan Queeley-Dennis says he, like his character, was "lost in a cloud of where I was headed in life"

One day when Nathan Queeley-Dennis was supposed to be busy lugging beer kegs in the cellar of the pub where he worked, he was instead writing his first script on his phone. It went on to win Britain's biggest playwriting prize, is now on tour, and is being turned into a TV show.

A morning shift at the Birmingham pub where Queeley-Dennis had worked since he was 16 would often involve lifting and carrying that day's deliveries. For that task, his bosses allowed a couple of hours.

"You can do it in two hours," he says. "But I've always been pretty strong, so I knew I could do it in about 15-20 minutes if I really hustled.

"Then I could just sit on my phone downstairs in the cellar, have a drink, have my breakfast and, like, chill."

And in 2018, he used the downtime to bash out the opening scene of a script on his notes app.

Four years later, Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz won the prestigious Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting. The year after that, it got glowing reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Now, it's just kicked off a national tour in Queeley-Dennis's home city - which looms large in the story - and has been snapped up by a TV production company headed by Peaky Blinders mastermind Steven Knight.

The Guardian praised his "light-footed charm [and] sure comic timing" in Edinburgh

After finishing drama school, Queeley-Dennis was trying to make it as an actor when he started looking for a solo script to perform in a monologue competition.

But he couldn't find anything that suited him as a young, black Brummie, he says. Hence he holed up in the pub cellar to write his own.

His short monologue introduced a hugely likeable young man called Nathaniel, who is eternally optimistic about finding love despite none of his many dates ever working out.

Queeley-Dennis received good feedback but didn't win the competition. He went back to working in the pub, hanging out with friends, and playing video games.

"One time I was playing on my PlayStation and I was like, I've been playing Fifa and Pro Evolution Soccer for about 15 years, and I thought, I feel absolutely nothing right now. So I just put it down."

He opened his laptop, typed up the script from his phone, and kept on writing.

"In the space of an hour and a half, I had 10 pages of dialogue, and I looked and I finished, and I'd never felt so alive in my whole entire life.

"Looking back on it, I think I was just yearning for some sort of creative release. I think I had so much creative energy, and I never used it."

Quarter-life crisis

Queeley-Dennis eventually expanded the story into a full show. We learn that the character Nathaniel studied fine art and dreams of being "a hybrid, edgy, sexy kind of Brum town Basquiat with a garnish of Banksy", but is in fact stuck working in a call centre.

The plot isn't autobiographical, the 29-year-old says, but the themes are.

"I'm not good at art. I've never worked a day in a call centre in my life. But have I spent time working in a job that I maybe felt was unfulfilling just to try and get by? Yes.

"Did it eat away at my soul? Yes. And did I waste my time putting my energy into things that weren't what I actually wanted to do, because I was lost in a cloud of where I was headed in life? One hundred per cent.

"So I always say the emotional journey of the character is very truthful.

"But actually, a lot of people at any point in their 20s have felt those feelings - that thing of, OK, you're out in the world now, and what am I going to do?"

The show had a run at London's Royal Court after the Edinburgh Fringe

In 2023, Queeley-Dennis took Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz to Edinburgh, where The Stage's critic said shows "do not get much more exuberant or entertaining than this", and WhatsOnStage said it "positively brims with good humour and warmth".

The Guardian described it as "a refreshingly healthy portrait of masculinity", which Queeley-Dennis "performs with such light-footed charm, sure comic timing and sweet sense of male romanticism that he has the audience in his hands".

It's premature to predict that it will follow Fleabag and Baby Reindeer as a one-person Fringe comedy-drama that becomes a TV hit, but it could well end up on that trajectory.

The screen rights were snapped up by the Kudos Knight production stable, and a series is being pitched to commissioners.

Knight is on a mission to build on the success of Peaky Blinders by bringing through more Birmingham talent and stories. Queeley-Dennis similarly believes the city has been neglected on stage and screen.

"I just feel like people shy away or pretend Birmingham doesn't exist. We see things set in Manchester, we see things set in Yorkshire, we see things set in London," he says.

"I just think it's the best city in the world and there's such a specific energy and verve and humour that we have. Everyone here has a certain humour, a certain attitude and mindset and chip on the shoulder we all share.

"Every city has its own different nuances. I think Birmingham does, and more stories need to honour that and show that."

'Creative renaissance'

Perhaps the city is not as forward about bigging itself up as somewhere like Manchester.

"I think people from Birmingham just get on with things to ourselves," Queeley-Dennis agrees.

"Over the last two years, I've had to get a lot better at talking myself up. Yeah, we might need to talk ourselves up more. Honestly, there are so many great artists in the city."

He's more comfortable talking with pride about the friends he would hang out with at creative events six or seven years ago, and who are now, like him, making their breakthroughs.

"There is a community of us, and now we've all branched out into different mediums of work," he says.

"There are actors on Netflix shows, writers like myself, artistic directors of long-standing companies, and producers and stuff like that. We were just hanging out back in 2017-18 all together."

He namechecks actors including Corey Weekes and Keiren Hamilton-Amos, screenwriter Ameir Brown, and Women & Theatre artistic director Adaya Henry.

"There are so many names. I do think there is a mini creative renaissance within the city, and artists from the city that people maybe aren't aware of yet.

"But I think in a few years' time, we'll all be all over the place, and I'm trying to just be a part of that."

Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz is at Birmingham Hippodrome until Saturday, 5 October, then on tour throughout October and November.