The Father Monologues, All Saints’ Centre, Lewes, June 10, June 24 and July 15

3:50pm Monday 9th June 2008

"I've always been interested in how men find ways of being emotional with each other, to be intimate with each other without being afraid," says Jonathan Brown, the writer-performer of The Father Monologues trilogy.

"Because there's always a danger of being accused of being gay, or soft or not a real man'. A lot of men turn to women for emotional support, rather than to each other."

He was inspired to write the first part of the series, which he will stage tonight, when his wife became pregnant with their first child. Brown began to focus on notions of fatherhood and masculine identity, resulting in the funny and thought-provoking story of the "apathetic, gambling chav dad Danny".

The second instalment (Tuesday, June 24) centres on the life of "gender-reassigned librarian" Jenny and features the unique spectacle of "a man playing a man playing a woman playing a woman playing a man making love to a man".

These carefully observed character studies will see Brown performing alone, aided only by subtle lighting changes and the minimal use of props. But he will be joined by guitarist Rafaelle Bizzoca for Billy: The Musical (Tuesday, July 15), which is Brown's most ambitious project to date by far.

The three-hour show - Brown advises audience members to "bring a cushion" - premiered last month at the Brighton Fringe Festival and has since been reworked to make it "more crisp and more finely tuned".

The lead character is Billy, best friend of Danny in Part One and Jenny's lover in Part Two.

"It's partly about him and partly about someone else I've been reading about - Dr Benjamin Rush, the founding father of modern American psychiatry," Brown explains.

In a quest to "recall who his father was", Billy undergoes regression therapy, only to find he has regressed to a "past life" - that of Dr Rush.

"In order to get therapy he gets himself referred to a psychiatrist by faking mental illness," he says. "So we get to look at the mental health system in the present day as well as examining its origins."

Brown was born and raised in Brighton, going on to work as a physics teacher, before moving to the West Country in the 1990s and retraining as a performance artist.

"I performed as a teacher, because physics is dull, there's no way around it," he says. "I always tried to have a laugh and have fun with the children I taught.

"But I was desperate to delve into what was making me tick subconsciously. I had to find a way of expressing my emotional side."

• June 10 (Part One), June 24 (Part Two), July 15 (Part Three), all 8pm, £8/£6 (one play), £14/£10 (two plays), £20/£15 (three plays), 01273 478817. Tickets available on the door or from Laportes, Friar's Walk, Lewes.

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