Introducing... Playwright Lucy Prebble

Lucy Prebble, 28, is a pretty Pinter. She wrote her first play at Sheffield University.

'I had written short stories and terrible poetry so I thought, "Why not."' It won her an award at the National Student Drama Festival but she maintains: 'My structure was terrible.'

After enrolling on a writers' course she wrote The Sugar Syndrome, which opened at the Royal Court in 2003. It won her a Critics' Circle Drama award for 'most promising playwright'.

She then adapted Secret Diary of a Call Girl, a book of blog posts by a London escort, for ITV, after meeting its author, the still-anonymous Belle de Jour, and countless women in the sex industry. 'We had a wonderful dominatrix who trained Billie Piper with a whip,' she explains.

Lucy grew up in Haslemere in Surrey. Her brother and sister are management consultants, her father works for a software company, and her mother is a state school teacher. 'I've always found it hard to reconcile the idea of social responsibility and the more corporate, libertarian perspective,' she says.

Her latest play, Enron, produced by Rupert Goold's Headlong Theatre, examines the downfall of the Texan-based energy firm in 2001. Lucy lives by herself in Forest Hill.

Why do you write about big business
For me there's a road-not-taken element. I often think what would have happened if I'd entered that world. The workplace is quite under-represented in theatre, but it's where most people spend most of their lives.

Isn't it a bit dull?
My first rule is 'do not bore'. Enron is not about numbers and economics. I thought, 'Let's do it with lots of swearing, hypermasculinity, motorbikes and lightsabers.' If you watch a trading floor in action, it's one of the most theatrical places.

Where do you begin with a subject like Enron?
I surrounded myself with books about the energy business. Then I contacted the people involved, but not the principal players because some are in prison and one is dead. I decided there's no point in writing a drama where you condemn everybody and say, 'Isn't making money bad.' The delusion that goes on in all of us is what makes it fascinating.

Is there a credit-crunch comedy in the pipeline?
What I really want to do next is something dreamlike and fantastical because the things I've most enjoyed working on in Enron are about illusion. A lot of finance is about making something appear profitable. You can get your naturalism in other media. Theatre should be something you can't get anywhere else.

Theatre or television?
I do love the fact that you can get drunk with the cast after a show. The respect they give you as a writer compared to film or TV is huge. That's quite addictive.

Enron is currently at the Chichester Festival Theatre and comes to the Royal Court Theatre on 17 September 2009.