Playwright: my fears of an English Columbine

The writer of a play empathising with the 7/7 bombers is causing more controversy with a work about a bloody classroom shooting.

Simon Stephens's new play, called Punk Rock, is inspired by his fears that a British school will suffer a Columbine-style attack.

He revealed details of the new production today as his terrorism play, Pornography, finally gets its London premiere at the Tricycle. No other London venue has been willing to present the play in the two years since it opened in Germany.

The Lyric in Hammersmith is being equally bold by scheduling Punk Rock which Mr Stephens, 38, calls "The History Boys with a hand grenade up it". Punk Rock is about the lives of a group of sixth-form friends in a fee-paying grammar school. It sees tensions grow between the teenagers until one is tipped over the edge.

Mr Stephens said he deliberately set the story in a middle-class school: "In theatre, violence is often by the economically marginalised. I wanted to create characters who were recognisable and likeable to a middle-class audience. The kids in Punk Rock are affluent, articulate, educated and violent." The shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and massacres in Finland and Germany were "some of the most haunting news events of the last decade" for Mr Stephens.

"As a father and teacher I am haunted by the future of our young. There's a part of me that thinks it could happen because the dislocation and alienation under an act like that is something some kids in England feel," he said. The father-of-three, who lives in Mile End, has worked in Eastbrook comprehensive, Dagenham, and in private schools since becoming a writer.

The cast for Punk Rock includes Tom Sturridge, making his stage debut after appearing in Richard Curtis's film The Boat That Rocked, and Jessica Raine, who was in David Hare's Gethsemane.Sturridge, 23, said: "People want to be protected at the theatre. If you see violence, it's between working-class and urban males and you can go home and say, 'Wasn't that scary, darling?'."

The play is the first put on by Sean Holmes, the Lyric's new artistic director. "It's provocative and challenging and will shock, but in a good way," he said.

In Pornography, Mr Stephens showed a bomber's journey from Leeds to the capital. He said: "When you think of terrorists as human beings, it allows you to think of victims as human beings."

Punk Rock is at the Lyric from 3 to 26 September.