Jonathan Brown was born in Brighton in 1964, and one day woke up as a Head of Physics at a big comprehensive. He went back to sleep, and dreamt that in 2002 he joined Jonathan Kay’s “Theatre of Now” project for 18 months and in 2005, joined improvised theatre company The Festival of Fools. In 2006, he definitely founded Something Underground Theatre Company, and focused initially on solo shows written and performed by him. The first four were included on The Fatherhood Institute website and/or the 2009 NCT Annual Conference. In 2011 came The Well, his first play for a cast, followed in 2012 by award-winning The Last Lunch (later revived in 2014).

The Well was revived professionally in 2013, alongside the first of three productions of award-nominated Betsy: Wisdom of a Brighton Whore, and award-winning The Silent Stream, both prequels to The Well. New award-winning solo show Smoking Ban followed in 2014, alongside another, Iron John, which presaged his new entirely-improvised solo show, Je Suis: A Fool’s Guide to Cliff Edges. In 2016 Jonathan his next new play for a cast was A Good Jew and in 2017-2018 Something Underground focused on developing & funding Of Our Own Making which began its London production in earnest late 2018, completing early 2019. Betsy was again acclaimed at the 2019 Brighton Fringe.

Jonathan has been a resident teacher (of solo shows) at London’s Cockpit Theatre since 2016, teaching his course in Lewes since 2012. He performs theatrical storytellings for families, leads classes in performance, has enjoyed development periods with New Writing South, been Associate Artist with Bridgwater Arts Centre, and worked at Mountfield. He has two children, home educates one of them and often, when he wakes, carefully checks he’s not reverted to being a physics teacher. All good so far.