The former Doncaster playwright is returning to Yorkshire for the theatre spectacular

A gritty stage show focusing on a mining disaster and penned by a Doncaster-raised playwright is coming to Yorkshire.

Ahead of its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, award-winning play Dust is making a poignant stop in the county.

Yorkshire-bred writer and director Charlaina Thompson, now based in Australia, is returning home to visit the former Lofthouse Colliery memorial site.

She has been invited by Tony Banks and the Lofthouse Colliery Heritage Group to pay tribute to the seven miners lost in the 1973 disaster—six of whom tragically remain buried below in Wakefield—before taking her play to Edinburgh.

Dust arrives in the UK following two sold-out Australian seasons.

Based on true survivor stories—including the grandfather of actor Craig McArdle—the play draws directly on the heritage and resilience of Yorkshire’s coalfield communities, making Charlaina’s visit to the site a deeply personal homecoming.

Tony, a former miner, face overman, and prominent mining historian famous for his work preserving Yorkshire's colliery heritage, he famously survived the tragic March 1973 Lofthouse Colliery disaster and has since co-authored definitive texts like Yorkshire Collieries 1947-1994.

He actively works with groups to memorialize historic pit sites.

The play explores the life of a man who survived one of the greatest mining tragedies in Northern England.

Rooted in Northern grit, this solo drama follows the final, fragmented memories of an elderly man in a hospital ward as he reflects on a life defined by the working-class struggle in Yorkshire.

The narrative moves back and forth through time, flowing between his present medicated delirium and his past as a boxer, a boilermaker, a soldier, and a miner.

Guided by the “10 Northern Commandments”, his inherited moral code, he attempts to justify the choices he made in life and make sense of a world shaped by hardship.

Exploring generational trauma, the erosion of industrial trades and how the experiences of our ancestors shape us, Dust is a brutal but tender look at the physical toll of industrial life.

The Lofthouse Colliery disaster occurred on Wednesday 21 March 1973, killing seven miners.

When a new coalface was excavated too close to an abandoned, flooded mineshaft, the sudden inrush of water trapped seven workers below whilst the rest were able to escape. The six-day rescue operation that followed succeeded in recovering only one body.

Dust is the first play in a trilogy of new work by Charlaina Thompson. Each show delves into themes of familial love, generational trauma and working-class life.

She said: “DUST and this body of work was written for my ancestors, to honour the memory of my hometown and celebrate the spirit, warmth and resilience of the north. The plays are fragments of my own memories, growing up in a working-class town and the Commandments are in my DNA.”

Performer Craig McArdle said, “It has been an honour to work on this play, and I hope that we have done justice to the memory of my grandad, the Lofthouse Colliery miners, their families and community.”

Listings information

Pleasance Courtyard, Bunker One (Venue 33), 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ

5 – 30 Aug (not 12, 18 & 25), 14:10 – 15:05

Previews 5 – 6 Aug: £9

Off Peak 13, 17 – 19, 20, 24 – 25, 27 Aug: £12 (£11 concs)

Peak 8 – 11, 14 – 16, 21 – 23, 28 – 30 Aug: £14 (£13 concs)