Simon Stephens rose to fame with plays like Bluebird, Motortown, Pornography and Punk Rock addressing a variety of gritty issues about the society we live in. His fearless and often controversial writing led him to become one of the most prolific playwrights of his generation. Most recently he's adapted Ibsen's A Dolls House for the Young Vic, as well as Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night for The National Theatre. Originally from Stockport, Simon Stephens made his hometown the backdrop of his play Port, first produced in 2002, an ultimately hopeful story of the triumph of human spirit over hardship.

Katie Antoniou: Port follows Racheal as she grows up in Stockport, striving for something better than the hand life seems to have dealt her- how did you go about writing from a young woman's point of view?

Simon Stephens: It was always something I had the suspicion I wasn't allowed to do. I guess it's symptomatic of gender politics in the 80s and 90s that writers kind of almost operated from the assumption that men couldn't (and so shouldn't try to) write women and women couldn't write men. I was sharing an office with Leo Butler and reading early drafts of his brilliant play 'Redundant' that led me to try. I interviewed a lot of women who had lived in Stockport all their lives. That helped. But in retrospect I don't think writing Racheal was any different to writing any other character I've written. Her gender is one of the many things that define her that I don't share and so had to imagine. I've also never lived in the part of Stockport she lived in. My Mum never left home. My brother never got into trouble with the law. I didn't see my Granddad after he'd died. I think writing characters requires a lot of empathy and a lot of imagination and that is absolutely the bloody fun of the thing.

KA: You recently adapted Mark Haddon's brilliant book 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night' for the stage, where again, you were writing from the point of view of a child- has having children of your own helped you remember what it's like to be a child? Do you think your writing has benefited from it?

SS: Well much of the dialogue on that play was Mark's, transcribed from the novel. My work on the play was structural and dramatic more than it was inventive. And when I did invent I was more concerned with being loyal to Mark's characters than in drawing from my own. But certainly having children has made me a better writer. On one hand it forces me to go to work in the morning. Because regardless of how much food I keep buying the buggers, they keep eating it and wanting more. I've little time to indulge myself. that's important. And also I think our subject as playwrights, necessarily is what it is to be a human being. There are, in my opinion, few better ways to explore that than to make one. The pram in the hallway is the engine of creativity, not its enemy.

Photo credit (c) Kevin Cummins

KA: I read somewhere that you originally wanted to be a songwriter, what happened there?

SS: I tried until I was about 21 and then realised I just couldn't sing to save my life. And at the same time fell in love with theatre. I did carry on playing music though. I played bass with the Scottish alt-punk-country band The Country Teaser for ten years. Released a few records. Toured the US and Europe. Had a lot of fun. Their singer and songwriter is a man called BR Wallers. He sometimes call himself THE REBEL. He's in a spectacular new band called The Devil. Google him. He is very, very special indeed.

KA: In the 2002 production of Port there was a backing track of Manchester bands featuring everyone from Joy Division to Oasis, is that part of the new production too?

SS: Well I wouldn't want to pre-empt the decisions of the sound designer, Ian Dickinson. You'll have to wait and see. He is a Manc too though. And he also designed it in 2002. So. There is a chance that people might here some Manc music played very fucking loud indeed in the Lyttleton theatre. And if I achieve nothing else in my life that might be something.

KA: I went to a talk about Three Kingdoms which you wrote for World Stages London last year, and I remember Jessica Hepburn explaining how interesting it was to work with the German members of the cast and crew, because German theatre culture is quite different from ours. I remember specifically, her saying that whilst in the UK we treat the playwright like 'God'- all powerful and all knowing- in Germany the director is given as much authority to add their creative input- to insert scenes or change the text. Am I remembering correctly and if so, how was that experience for you?

SS: It is true, to an extent that in German theatre (and in much of European theatre) the director is considered to be the central audience. Personally I really love that. A lot of writers get quite nervous about having their decsions about casting or design or visuals or structure or who speaks what lines when and why, taken out of their hands. I've found it constantly stimulating and continue to. Theatre is a collaborative art form. More than any other art form that I've worked in. I love it when my collaboraters are bold and fearless and imaginative and German theatre culture, at its best, encourages that in its directors.

KA: Two pieces you wrote, both set in the capital, were performed together at the end of last year in the show 'London'. What do you love about London? And what do you hate?

SS: I love its mess and its chaos. I love that it grew and grows organically so there is a real social and racial mix. I love its age and its newness at one and the same time and the river and the architecture and the East End and the Pavilion Cafe in Victoria Park and the theatres, and that theatre is so deep in the metabolism and that the football is inferior to football in manchester and the edifices of the fire and of the war and the tolerance and the energy and the bars and the galleries and dubstep and the clubs and the restaurants and wandering for hours and the Canal.

Photo credit (c) Kevin Cummins

KA: Port was originally produced back in 2002, but it feels very timely now, in the wake of both the darkness of the riots of 2011, but also the optimism of the Olympics in 2012. In what seems like a dark time for young people from working class homes like Racheal, the play has a definite vein of hope running through it. Do you worry that the young people who most need to see this play won't get the chance to because theatre still feels so inaccessible to working class teenagers?

SS: I think that's a fair question and one that I know the National are sensitive too. Ticket prices are comparatively really, really low for this show. And a lot of effort is being made to reach out to young audiences from a range of social backgrounds. Whether it works or not I don't know. It strikes me though that the issue is one of entitlement rather than economics. Ticket prices for Port are cheaper than most cinema tickets, the door fee at a lot of clubs and gigs and all football tickets. But it will still be harder to crack through the idea that young people are entitled to come to the theatre. The Lyric, Hammersmith, where I work as an Associate, has worked hard to crack through and is starting to succeed. So it is possible. I think the National are trying to do the same thing. And I applaud that. Because this is a play about youth and I think it's a play with an optimistic take on youth. It came out of my experiences of working as a schoolteacher in Dagenham. I left that job with a palpable sense that young people in this country have a huge amount of potential and possibility. That they are the best of our country. And that if we can tap that and release it we will be a better country because of that.

Port is at The National Theatre until 24th March.

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