Last modified on Wed 12 May 2021 15.01 EDT
The setting is a social club in Easington, County Durham. An ex mining town, itâs the kind of place where pit closures have, over the decades, left men lacking purpose, pride and paid employment. Amid the pints and the racing on the TV, Jackson Watson cuts a despondent figure, curled on the floor, the slow spinning and twisting of his b-boy moves standing in for a tangled spiral of thoughts, occasionally crashing to the ground.
Around him, hardly anyone notices. The tormentâs all going on inside, because young men are expected to put on a front, to be âmachoâ as the title puts it. Newcastle choreographer Michael Heatley and his company Hit the Ground Running made Macho, which has now been turned into a film, in 2016 to address menâs mental health and what lies under a personâs show of strength. The piece was developed from real menâs stories, against the backdrop of a region, the north-east, that has one