BAFTA and Golden Globe nominee Cathy Tyson stars in Michelle Inniss' new play, She Called Me Mother at the Lighthouse Poole on October 15-16. The play invites the audience into the life of Evangeline Gardner - a homeless, 70-year-old Afro-Caribbean woman living on the streets where she is reunited with her estranged daughter Shirley.

The hard-hitting play is a departure from Cathy's most recognisable roles on TV and the big screen.

“If the work isn't coming, you have to go and make it for yourself,” says Cathy, 50.

“I've never done anything like this before. This play has been in my house for ages, but I didn't read it until late last year - it's funny how things happen like that. But then it surfaced and I read it and that was that, we had to put it on,” added Cathy.

Cathy was 17 when she began her career at the Liverpool Everyman. She joined the RSC in 1984 and made her mark on the wider public two years later starring opposite Bob Hoskins in Neil Jordan's film Mona Lisa. Other film and television roles followed including Band of Gold, Grange Hill and Emmerdale before she enrolled on an access to higher education course in 2009 followed by a degree in English and Drama at Brunel University.

“It's about taking risks - and I'm a risk taker - and being brave enough to put your work up there and stand by it. I think after going to uni I got cheeky again, I got my cheek back. What have I got to lose? I can get up there and do that and it might be turn out to be great, but if I don't do it I'll never know.”

She Called Me Mother is written in poetic Trinidadian vernacular rarely heard on UK stages and is the second production from Black Theatre Live, a pioneering consortium of eight regional theatres, including Lighthouse, committed to touring inventive Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic theatre to venues across the country.

“I have this experience and that informs your views so my mission is to talk about things that aren't necessarily spoken about publicly. I want to talk about homelessness, but to do so the story has to be there first and it's there in Michelle's writing, the language she uses, the Trinidadian dialect.”

: For more information about tickets please contact 0844 406 8666 or lighthousepoole.co.uk