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Tell me about your latest play, The Lifesavers.

It’s about a young woman, Cathy, who wants to have a child. Unfortunately, she lives in a world that no longer believes it’s safe to let people raise their own children. Cathy’s next step, and the reaction of the authorities, makes a very scary play!

What was the inspiration behind it?

Uniquely for a play of mine, it began with a dream, or maybe a nightmare. Lots of images haunt the play: the disintegration of kindness in places like Bosnia and Rwanda; the way we deal, or fail to deal, with child neglect and abuse in our own country – the Baby P case, and so on. When I woke up, the opening lines of the play were wedged in my mind, but I’d forgotten the rest of the dream. I wrote the play as a way of figuring out what these terrifying words might mean for us.

After opening in London, The Lifesavers transfers to Colchester. As a writer based in the East of England, how important is it for you to see your work performed in the region?

I really love it when work gets produced here. Of course you want to feed into the creative scene in your own region, but on a personal level, most of the people I see day to day rarely get to a theatre at all. If they do, it won’t be one in London where a lot of my work happens. I know I’m going to have lots of very interesting conversations with people I see in my kids’ playground, once they’ve trucked over to Colchester to see this play.

How do you find working as a playwright in Cambridgeshire?

The biggest disappointment – a crime, really – is that there isn’t a major professional theatre venue in Cambridge committed to producing new plays. Ridiculous, given the size and profile of the city. Fortunately that doesn’t mean there isn’t lots of good work going on in this and neighbouring counties. Most locally, I’ve been lucky enough to work a lot with Menagerie Theatre. Although a small company, they produce work which both plays in London and gets toured throughout the region.

The Lifesavers is the first co-production between Theatre 503, one of the sharpest theatres on the London Fringe, and Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, one of our great regional theatres. It’s about making the most of the work we do produce.

You’ve recently penned a collection of short stories, Wrestling Angels. How have you found the move from drama to prose fiction?

Making theatre is – eventually – a very social activity. When a script goes into production it’s like a black hole, sucking in lots of other artists – actors, directors, designers, and so on – all combining in this massive effort to help the play explode into life. Consequently, I get out more. That said, I’ve always written stories, and although you have to work much harder to hit the right tone – no actors to help – Wrestling Angels has turned into a really absorbing project.

You earned an Escalator Literature Award (part of an Arts Council initiative to develop and promote artists in the East of England) for your fiction work. How important has that been to you?

Very. Financially it means I can work on the stories without feeling I’m bunking off, and I can employ an experienced writer to read and comment on the prose as I’m producing it. Most of all though, I was one of ten writers from the region to win the award. It’s been great to be part of such a varied bunch – journalists, academics, poets – all provoking each other to write good fiction.

Three of your stories are being broadcast on Radio 4 this month. What does that mean to you?

Forty-five minutes of agony! I enjoyed abridging the stories for radio, and then had a ball working with the readers to record them. Then the stories go on air – silence, followed by the News. At least in the theatre you get a fair idea of what the audience thinks of your latest offering. On the other hand, each story will play to far more people in one broadcast than the entire run of a stage play. Practically, I hope the readings will help attract a publisher for the stories.

When you’re not writing, you direct the Writing Drama course at Anglia Ruskin University. Do you find your work there feeds into your own writing and vice versa?

I do teach from some of my own plays on the course – I thinkÌý it’s a great plus for students to be able to ask how a play translated from words on a page to a full stage production. Does teaching feed back into writing? Yes. At the end of each year, I resolve to break all my own rules.

What’s next for you?

My first opera Don’t Breathe a Word (written with Cambridge composer Andrew Lovett) is being developed by the Royal Opera House this year – very exciting. The next play in the region is a new mainstage play for the Mercury Theatre – look out for King David: Man of Blood later this year or early next.

The Lifesavers is at London’s Theatre 503 from 27th January to 21st February (Box Office: 020 7978 7040), and at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre Studio from 24th February to 7th March (Box Office: 01206 573948, boxoffice@mercurytheatre.co.uk).