A former University of Lancashire student has transformed his family history, rooted in Chorley and Preston, into Marie, a historical audio play about wartime love, memory, and the quieter lives lived alongside global conflict.
Written and produced by Sebastian Towyn-Brown, Marie is loosely inspired by his grandmother, who grew up in Chorley. While fictionalised, the play’s emotional centre comes directly from stories passed down through his family. “It’s not a straight retelling,” Towyn-Brown says. “There just isn’t enough information for that, and in a way, that made it easier.”
The project began during lockdown, after his uncle submitted a short version of the story to a podcast. That was when Towyn-Brown first encountered one of its most shocking details: a Dutch man who travelled to England years later, searching for the woman he had loved during the war. “That stayed with me,” he says, “but I knew it wasn’t something I could write straight away. It’s a difficult story to tell.”
As he began developing Marie, Towyn-Brown chose not to chase historical certainty. Conversations with family members revealed a story that had fragmented over time. “By the time I was talking to my uncle about it, he wasn’t even sure how much of it was true anymore,” he says. Rather than seeing that as a limitation, Towyn-Brown embraced it. “I could focus on what felt emotionally right.”
That focus is most evident in how the play centres Marie herself. Set largely in her twenties, the story presents her not as a grandmother or a symbolic figure, but as a young woman trying to find her place in the world. “She’s not defined by men,” Towyn-Brown explains. “She’s political, impatient, and independent.”
Early drafts leaned more heavily on the romantic storyline, but feedback from the cast shifted that balance. “Toby Walker, who played Sergeant Harris, said I needed at least one more scene where she’s just talking to a friend,” Towyn-Brown recalls. “You need to see who she is outside of a romantic relationship.” Those scenes helped ground Marie as a fully realised character, shaped by friendships, opinions, and frustration with the limits placed on her.
Some of that dialogue comes directly from real life. “The first thing Trevor ever says to her in the play is exactly what he said in person,” Towyn-Brown says.
Designed specifically as an audio play, Marie makes deliberate use of sound and silence. The entire production was recorded in-studio over three days, with Towyn-Brown editing the play himself. “The pub scenes are just the actors talking,” he explains. “Everything else was added afterwards.” Sound effects are used sparingly, guiding the listener through time and place without overwhelming the performances. “It was about knowing when to add something and when to leave space.”
Rather than spectacle, Marie focuses on the everyday presence of war in offices, pubs, and among people at work. “I wanted one moment where you feel how close the war is,” Towyn-Brown says, “but even then, it’s not dramatised.”
Place is central to the story. Marie’s parents lived near Chorley, and Towyn-Brown studied and lived in Preston while at university. “Living up there gave me a connection with her,” he says. For someone who never met his grandmother, who died decades before he was born, writing Marie became a way of getting closer. “By the end of it, I definitely felt that.”
The play’s ending resists melodrama in favour of something quieter and more truthful. Two lives, connected by one person, meet not in conflict, but in recognition. “It wouldn’t have felt right for it to be explosive,” Towyn-Brown says. “That’s just not who my granddad was.”
For listeners in Preston and Chorley, Marie offers a rare kind of local story, one that avoids nostalgia and easy sentimentality. It doesn’t tie history up neatly. Instead, it asks what it means to inherit stories you can’t fully verify, and whether understanding matters more than certainty.
“I hope it makes people think about their own family histories,” Towyn-Brown says. “The things you don’t know. The things that never get talked about.”
Sometimes, those stories aren’t lost. They’re simply unheard.
You can listen to Marie on Spotify and follow @onemoretake.ig on Instagram for updates from Sebastian.
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