MARK Catley goes Searching For The Heart Of Leeds in the final West Yorkshire Playhouse production in the Quarry Theatre before a major redevelopment programme begins.

Fifty years since the birth of the Playhouse that came out of a public campaign calling for a theatre for the people of Leeds, this celebration of "people, theatre and our city" will be presented by a community company of 70, six community choirs and a band of eight musicians recruited from across Leeds from tomorrow to Saturday.

"Searching For The Heart Of Leeds is a collection of short stories, some nostalgic, some contemporary, which, when knitted together, give a very real and emotional reflection of what it means to live in Leeds," says Catley, a BAFTA award-winning writer for stage and television who took his early writing steps at the Playhouse in the BBC Regional Voices project in 1997 and has since written for E4's My Mad Fat Diary, as well as BBC1's Call The Midwife, Casualty and, for the past year, EastEnders.

Catley drew on more than 200 stories from Leeds residents, leading to his play being built around the journey of lost Loiner Ben as she searches the landmarks, communities and histories of the city to find what makes Leeds Leeds.

"Listening to my fellow Loiners has been a pleasure, and I hope audiences enjoy their stories as much as I have," says Catley. (A 'Loiner', by the way, is the local name for a citizen of Leeds.) Catley's script has been taken from page to stage by Playhouse director of creative engagement Alexander Ferris, musical director and composer Christella Litras, from the Caution Collective, and movement direction by the Playhouse's Quarry Hill neighbours, Phoenix Dance Theatre.

"It's a Leeds show on the biggest scale since Carnival Messiah (the late Geraldine Connor's unforgettable fusion of opera and theatre) and I have a really emotional response to it," says Catley. "They're not professional performers but there are some really good, honest performances, with people giving their all."

When the Playhouse approached Catley to write this community play, he could not resist. "With the volume of work I had on, I really shouldn't have said 'Yes'," he says. But you know that expression, "if you really want to get something done, give it to a busy person"...Catley was that person. "I decided to do it, regardless of EastEnders commitments!" he says.

He first became involved last year, conducting some interviews and presenting a performance for one night only in the Quarry, whereupon a combination of a research team and the cast elicited the 200 stories from which this week's production took shape.

"The first half is more nostalgia; the second half is more contempoary, and it just turned out like that. There's dark and light in every era, but there's now a different feel to Leeds to what it was like in the Sixties and Seventies.

"What Leeds is about now, it's fair to say it's a diverse city and much more open, and yes, that's a good thing. Sometimes the history of Leeds has been to the detriment of its communities, but there's a real resilience to this city even if the communities have changed."

Catley's show also captures the city's humour. "There's a certain dryness to our humour," he says. "When I'm in London, sometimes they can't work out whether I'm being serious or not. That's the Leeds humour."

Ironically, the Playhouse had come up with the play's title before Catley took up his invitation to write it. "I thought, 'why did they do that?', but then I thought, 'let's make that search the story'."

* Searching For The Heart Of Leeds, Quarry Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tomorrow (Tuesday) until Saturday, 7.30pm nightly, except 8pm on Friday, plus 2pm on Saturday. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk