Famous relation a surprising revelation
Nov 16 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal
AN award-winning play gets its world premiere at the People’s Theatre tonight and it would be nice to think that the venue’s founders will be looking down on it with a kindly eye.
Pig Stew, which is being staged as the winner of this year’s biennial People’s Play award, was written by Fiona Veitch Smith who is distantly related to two of the key founders of the theatre and the celebrated amateur drama group which runs it.
Her great grandfather, Joseph, was a cousin of Colin and Norman Veitch who came to the fore when the Newcastle branch of the British Socialist Party started to stage plays to raise money to fund its political activities.
What began as the Clarion Dramatic Society, in a building at the corner of Percy Street and Leazes Terrace in Newcastle which still stands today, became the People’s Theatre.
The first production, in 1911, was The Bishop’s Candlesticks. The company moved into its current premises, the converted Lyric cinema on Stephenson Road, Heaton, in 1962.
Fiona, who was born in Corbridge in 1970 but has spent most of her life in South Africa, first entered the People’s Play competition a few years ago and was shortlisted.
But at that time she had no idea she was related to the Veitch brothers.
Colin was the famous one, having captained Newcastle United during its Edwardian heyday and then gone on to work as a journalist for The Evening Chronicle while also writing plays.
She found this out at a great aunt’s funeral seven years ago. “I’d never heard the name Colin Veitch before then because we had become cut off from that side of the family,” says Fiona.
