THE experiences of life behind the news camera is being brought to the stage.

Bury-born TV news and documentary film producer Sarah O’Connell has drawn from her experiences in the media industry to create a new production.

Concrete Jungle will be premiered as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival at the Whitefield Garrick next month.

The play is written by Sarah and inspired by the stories and characters she has come across, both on the streets and in the newsrooms.

She said: "The play is about the way relationships develop with contributors and their interviewees. It is about the class divide and the North-South divide. It raises issues of racism and sexism, the way we edit material and the agendas behind why we include this and not that.

"What I have tried to do in the play is show the audience the rushes so there are a series of interviews throughout the play where the journalist is interviewing the dealers and the addicts. At the end of the play they will see a clip that has been cut to make someone say something completely different.

"That is really what motivated me to write the play, when you have executive editors and producers that tell you have to edit it like this. I have always worked with reputable news organisations and I know people assume that what I’m saying is truthful and honest and fair.

"If you work for Panorama nobody questions your integrity. It was the same with the Leveson Inquiry, no one questioned broadcast journalists, it was all about print.

"The play has serious bits but the relationship between Natalia and the addicts is funny. I’ve been in those situations where I have spent months with addicts. I have come out and my clothes have smelt. It is not nice conditions. But we have laughed. I have included a lot of that humour in the play."

Sarah graduated in law at university in Edinburgh before getting a job in Arab television, then as a researcher in the House of Commons as part of the Blair government, and later the BBC.

She has since worked on documentary Drugland: Manchester, David Frost’s programme on Sir David Frost's Al Jazeera International, The Guardian, Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC2 programme and has trained journalists in community radio in South Sudan.

In the play, a young, ambitious journalist, Natalia Southern, is making a film on drug dealers for a major TV news organisation.

Natalia travels home, to the north of England, to find and film her subjects, who are dealers and addicts. But as Natalia becomes closer to her interviewees, she is increasingly isolated from her producers in London.

The production will run from July 25 to 30, at 7.30pm, at the Whitefield Garrick, Bank Street.