CAN you imagine being the first child to be born into a village community for 25 years?

Such was the fate of the elder sister of blossoming North Yorkshire playwright Charley Miles, whose first play, Blackthorn, will be premiered in the Barber Studio at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from tonight until Saturday.

Prompted by her experiences of growing up in High Kilburn, near Thirsk, 25-year-old Charley has written a contemporary, lyrical, if turbulent tale of first love that reflects rural language and landscapes.

“Blackthorn tells of the intense bonds that form between the only two children born to a tiny village in a generation, and how they twist and strain under the pressure of their differing future, which threatens to pull them apart forever,” she says.

Charley had first forged a relationship with the Leeds theatre last summer. “I got involved as a writer here when I came to the Summer Sublets scheme for a week and worked on a script that dealt with the same theme of belonging,” she says.

“Jacqui [Honess-Martin], the literary associate at the Playhouse, has worked with me from the start and is now directing Blackthorn.”

York Press:

Country Miles: playwright Charley in the Yorkshire broad acres

What happened to last summer’s script? “It was very quickly torn up and burnt by me, but then I came back and did the Playwrights 1 course last autumn, one night a week for eight weeks, which was also run by Jacqui,” says Charley, recalling her participation in the writer development programme.

“At the end of that I submitted a scene, one that’s now from this play, and I got a call where the theatre said, ‘would you like to come and write the rest of it in January?’, which felt like a real breakthrough.”

Subsequently, a scene was presented at a scratch night and now Honess-Martin and her cast of Charlotte Bate and Harry Egan have been putting Blackthorn’s coming-of-age story through its rehearsal paces. “I’ve been very much there, working on re-writes,” says Charley. “Luckily I’ve got to be involved a lot in the rehearsal room where I’ve learned so much from seeing them working on the script.”

Blackthorn is the first play to be presented as part of Furnace: Plays, a seasonal series of new, stripped-back productions of plays by writers born, raised or now living in Yorkshire.

“Blackthorn is an artistic reflection of my own childhood: a look at how, and if, we can still belong to the people and places of our past, as we grow and change,” says Charley.

“The play’s name comes from the blackthorn plant, which is known for being incredibly difficult to uproot. As the characters come of age, their beliefs and expectations change, so the urgent question becomes whether or not their bond can endure.”

Charley’s big dream is to make living as a playwright. “But I’m a natural-born pessimist, so I’m trying not to think beyond September because this has been such an amazing experience, though I am writing other things...”

Blackthorn runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight to Saturday. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk