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Tell us more about 'Wrestling Mad'...

It's a play about two recent graduates from a northern university, one of whom has a Master's degree, one of whom has a doctorate in the literature of the Weimar Republic. They are about to embark on a schools and community tour of Dracula up the east coast when their grants get pulled. They are back to square one and what do they do to keep themselves in Chinese takeaways and lager, to keep the lights on and the water running and pay the rent? The most logical conclusion for two people who are highly qualified would be to become supply teachers but they don't like the idea of supply teaching even though it's a £110 a day. They don't fancy the notion of being surrounded by kids. One of them desperately wants a job in Casualty and goes for an interview but doesn't even get a part as a corpse. Then they hit on the idea that since one of them is six foot four inches and nearly 20 stone, wouldn't it be a good idea to give wrestling a go? So the play then follows these two mostly unlikely wrestlers as they interface with the worlds of amateur, and later professional, wrestling.

Cast of Wrestling Mad

Is this in any sense autobiographical?

Funny you should say that. I was at Leeds University in 1979 debating whether to do a full-time PhD or a part-time PhD and the head of the department asked if I'd ever thought about being a wrestler and I said to him, 'Well, I fancy being a playwright to be honest.' I think he was only trying to be helpful and thirty odd years later that moment crystallised and has become the starting point for this play. The play's a look at wrestling but it's also a look at what we would do to earn a crust and there is a very strong link between wrestling and theatre because it is about illusion and villains and stories. I did it last year in Hull as a tryout and I didn't quite get it right but I think I've got it right now.

How difficult is it for a dramatist to get into the world of professional wrestling?

Well I'm 50 in a week so I am not going to take up wrestling now but I would have thought 20 years ago it would have been fairly easy. I did all the research for the wrestling circuit in this country and some people actually pay to get in the ring. If they've got a good character, and a character they believe in and a character they think the audience will relate to, some blokes will pay £100 a night to get into a wrestling ring and be thrown about for 20 minutes in the hope the promoter will see them and put them on in Bognor Regis Butlins. That's the big gig!

You keep on coming back to the Wakefield Theatre Royal. Why?

Yes. I come here because I'm asked to come, and I suppose if I was asked to go to the West Yorkshire Playhouse I'd go there but for whatever reason people don't ask.Ìý I know where I'm welcome and that's where I go.

When you were growing up in Upton did you ever think your future would be in drama?

Originally I wanted to play football and then as I got bigger I wanted to play rugby. Then I wanted to be an actor or be a comedian and then I fell into writing plays quite by accident. A friend of mine took his own life after we'd been to a nightclub in Pontefract and I wrote a play about it. Whether it would have been as a professional playwright or as an actor or as a drama teacher I don't know but I'd always wanted to be involved with drama in some way because I found it very satisfying and in schools it is crucial for kids reflecting how they feel about the world and reflecting back to them how the world treats them. In theatre terms, and I might say even television terms, I think it's crucial that this part of the world gets its image reflected back to it. You can't say there's much about this part of Yorkshire on television. It's dressed up to look like somewhere else, to be candyfloss, and I think that's a sadness.

You mention kids in school and a lot of your work has been in set in schools. Is this an area you think you might go back to?

Schools are like asylums. There's a million and one stories there. But you've got to be careful you are not telling the same story over and over again. I think we've also got to be careful we don't think, just because we've moved on, that the kids have generally moved on. I think there are young people growing up in West Yorkshire now who deserve the opportunity to express themselves though the arts in the same way I did - crikey - nearly 35 years ago. Those opportunities are crucial if young people are to engage and to express how they feel about a very difficult and a very adult-minded world. I mean drama in schools for me is absolutely central to any curriculum. Sadly it's not always the case but I think it is really, really important.

Bretton: 'Four best years of my life'

Do you think children are put off by their perceptions of the stage and the theatre?

Some are, some aren't. I think as many are put off by it as are turned on by it to be honest. It's like sport – if it's shoved down your throat you either say 'I'm into it' or forget it. The same is true of the arts and of drama in particular. There are some people who I grew up with, and kids I can remember teaching, who didn't get drama no matter how good a teacher I was or how many times they did it school. They didn't get it, they didn't want to get it but there were others who really got it and wanted to express themselves. Bizarrely there are some people I could name who didn't get drama at school but later on joined dramatic groups and turned into writers of poetry and short stories. For me, and I'm bound to say this, it's such a natural thing because even from being very young we are developed by listening to stories from our parents or carers or whoever. We tell stories and jokes at school. We make a myth of our own childhood in a sense by exaggerating aspects of our everyday experience. It's so kind of hand in glove with drama that it's hard for me to see the differential, where one stops and the other begins, if you see what I am saying.

Is there any particular play you would look back on as the one you are most proud of?

Yes, there are plays [I'm particularly proud of] but they are probably not the ones that are well known. I mean the more autobiographical plays, and the plays I've written about growing up in West Yorkshire and Upton, and one in particular that has only ever been performed in Hull called Our House which was an autobiographical play about me buying my mum a bungalow because drug dealers moved in next door. I mean that's not been seen in West Yorkshire and it deserves to be because it's a cracker.

You went to Bretton Hall. Do you think that was a help on the path you've followed since?

Of course. I mean it was absolutely crucial for me. The four best years of my life were at Bretton and I'm particularly uncomfortable to see it swallowed up by Leeds University and moved to the middle of Leeds. What benefit that could be to students in drama is beyond me but I'm not a politician!

Are there themes which you think you go back to?

Yes, I think I go back to the outsider, people looking in, and closed worlds and the underdog – that seems to be a theme. Whether or not its Up 'n' Under or whether it's four guys on the door at a nightclub who would rather be picking up women and their role in life is to stand outside and stop people coming in, I've always been a champion of the underdog.