ALISTAIR McDowall, from Great Broughton in North Yorkshire, has been named by Simon Stephens, writer of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time, as the most exciting playwright of the last five years.

His latest play, Pomona, a gritty science fiction thriller, with its roots in reality, is set in a deserted wasteland in Manchester and is described by Variety as a metaphor for all the things in the world we choose not to see.

It was nominated as the best new play, winning five Offies (Off West End Awards) and McDowall was nominated as the most promising playwright in the London Evening Standard’s Charles Wintour Award last year.

A former pupil of Stokesley School, he was described by his drama teacher as an outstanding student who wanted to push the boundaries.

He devised plays for friends and for his A-Level course. He was an avid reader, devouring plays by Sarah Kane, Joe Orton, Pinter and Beckett from the department, and the school library.

He wrote stories from the age of six and was inspired by Stephen Spielberg and Stephen King. From the age of 16 he was writing a play a month. His university years studying drama and theatre studies in Manchester gave him the freedom to write and access to film units.

He was an usher at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama in Manchester while a student which gave him access to rehearsal space.

“I love fiction,” he said. "When I'm writing I don't have a specific audience in mind, but I do feel a big responsibility generally to every audience that might see the play. I have a short attention span myself, so I'm always very conscious of not boring anyone if at all possible.

"I don't want anyone in the audience to feel I've wasted their time, even if they didn't like the play. Other than that, I don't ever feel locked into any specific genre. A play I'm writing might begin as a comedy and end as a nightmare, or vice versa."

After university he worked in an art gallery in Manchester, writing plays in his spare time and performing them with university friends in pubs and on the Fringe, but it was writing longer plays and getting himself an agent which led to him winning The Bruntwood Prize in 2011.

This enabled him to become a professional playwright, which opened doors at the Royal Court in London and Royal Exchange in Manchester.

“The Royal Court supports the writer, not just the play,” he said. “They gave me space to write and a residency. When I was reading plays at school, I used to see 'performed at the Royal Court' on the fly cover and had this ambition about wanting to work there one day. I never thought I would be receiving commissions to write plays for them. I feel lucky and very privileged to be doing what I do.”

Alistair lives with his wife, Amy, in Manchester and regularly travels to London where much of his work is based. He teaches playwriting at the Royal Court and is writing a film. He travels abroad to see his plays performed in Europe and the US and now has German, French, Swedish and Italian agents as well as his British one.

One play, Talk Show, was set in Stokesley and ran at Open Court. The prize-winning, Brilliant Adventures, set in an imagined part of Middlesbrough, explores themes of regret and missed opportunities and involves a time machine.

In 2013, his play Captain Amazing was a sell-out at the Edinburgh Fringe, looking at how all parents strive to be heroes in the eyes of their children. It was described as the best one man show at the Fringe that year.

Pomona came at the end of 2013 and has been his most successful play to date, playing at the Orange Tree in Richmond, the National Theatre and at the Royal Exchange.

“I had no idea Pomona was going to be such a success,” he said.” "Every play is a risk. I draft and redraft paying attention to detail, but I can never know if people are going to like it or not. I'm always just trying to write about real people and tell a good story. I don't think too much beyond that. I let the audiences interpret them however they like. I like to build worlds where the audience fill in the gaps."

He has been commissioned by the Royal Court to write a play which will be performed in April. Called X, it and is about a crew of British scientists stationed on Pluto who lose contact with Earth.

Naturalism is never enough, and the audience can expect some surprises from this writer whose imagination blows open wide the conventions of theatre and blends the mundane and the fantastical.

"If an idea could be a book or a film, then I won't put it on the stage,” he said. “It has to justify itself as a live piece of theatre. The exciting thing about working in theatre is that beyond that, whatever rules there are, you can break them, immediately."

Jan Hunter