Anya Reiss is a pretty impressive nineteen year old. She is the youngest ever playwright to have a play staged in London. Her first, Spur of the Moment, was received with critical acclaim, winning her the Most Promising Playwright gong at both the Evening Standard and Critics Circle awards. Since then she has written her second play, The Acid Test, as well as a monologue entitled The Cure, staged in a one-off event at the Old Vic Theatre under the direction of Danny Boyle. Despite her early promise, The Cure's success came as a surprise to the London teenager. She completed the Young Writer's Programme at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and it wasn't until the theatre told her that the play she submitted was going to be put on that it suddenly hit her - 'oh, I'm a writer now.'

Whilst Reiss has credentials that might make anyone else unbearably smug, her modesty is refreshing. Although Spur of the Moment was described by one critic as a 'blistering indictment of the way we live, parent and grow to maturity now', Reiss is adamant that her writing doesn't follow an agenda. 'I suppose I'm quite good at reading people and guessing someone's reaction to something in real life. That's all I really do in writing - create a little scenario then let them all react. If it adds up to something bigger that's great, but it’s not the thing I'm thinking of when I write it.' Additionally, Reiss denies that her age is an issue, despite the attention she continues to receive because of it. She explains, 'I don't think you're ever aware of being young, you always seem old to yourself. It's like how a ten year old declares that they are an adult just because they've hit double figures'.

While she denies that her young age has affected her work, it is precisely this unaffectedness that marks Reiss out. What she would like to achieve through her writing, she explains, is 'for people to recognise faults in themselves and in others, to inspire forgiveness and change.' It comes down to a desire to understand people better. When asked what advice she would give to other aspiring playwrights, it is unsurprising that Reiss' response is equally straightforward: 'just write something and, most importantly, finish it. If you want to be a writer it's as simple as - just write. You need stuff down on a page that you can send to theatres, make your friends read, give to amateur groups. You never know who will have a friend of a friend's cousin who owns Broadway. Assumptions that you need to be taught or need a quick result, aren't understood or can't work something out, are generally unhelpful.'

In her most recent play, The Acid Test, Reiss asks her audience to question whether age directly implies maturity. What, she asks, does it really mean to be an adult? When someone is kitted out with all the tools and the qualifications, what tips them over from being adult on paper to bona-fide grown-up? Reiss explores the question through three twenty-something girls, newly graduated from university, raising the additional question of what it means to be a woman. She describes the situation of these girls as 'that middle-class blank, post-uni stage that some people go through.’ But Reiss is keen to deny that social station is the root of all woe. 'I think whatever class you are you get upset over your boyfriend, you have issues with your parents, you have to deal with your attitude towards sex. To the girls these are life and death situations because of their age, not because of their class.' To Reiss, the three girls represent three ways that women identify themselves in relation to men - abstaining, committing, or sleeping around. 'I wanted to write about female friendship - not in the E4 bitch fest way, or in the BBC loving and understanding way, but the strangely unhelpful way that women can hate and love each other at the same time. Despite their support for each other, sometimes they can revert to being 'male' and only offer a cigarette and a drink.'

So what does Anya Reiss feel about The Acid Test being put on it Cambridge? She's thrilled. 'I love the idea that it will reach a new audience and that people will be finding their own new way of doing it, especially as three of the characters are recent university graduates, who are not sure what to do now that they have finished education and are in the 'real world'’.

Anya Reiss' play The Acid Test will be on at the Corpus Playroom 18th - 22nd October