THE West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Country Music – the first professional revival since its premiere at the Royal Court in 2004 – will tour Yorkshire prisons this summer. No-one is more delighted at that decision than playwright Simon Stephens.

“It was the theatre’s suggestion but I’m absolutely thrilled by it,” he says. “There was talk of touring it the first time round in London, and I was frustrated that it didn’t, so the news that it will tour prisons now is very pleasing.”

Stephens wrote Country Music after spending six months working in HMP Wandsworth and HMP Grendon in 2003. “The prisoners I met there inspired and moved me. Their humility and humour, their energy and imagination and wit were palpable and deeply affecting,” he says.

His desire to dramatise their humanity led him to write his account of the life of violent offender Jamie Carris, whose irrational but passionate decisions at 18 have irredeemable consequences. Fervently protective, Jamie’s misguided actions leave his brother overwhelmed by guilt and his young family desperate to escape. When they move north leaving no forwarding address, Jamie determines to find them, yet only when he comes face to face with his adult daughter does the futility of his actions, then and now, become disturbingly obvious.

Simon recalls the impact of the only previous performance to a prison audience. “We did it for one day at Wandsworth in 2004 and that was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had,” he says. “I’ve never sat in a theatre audience more engaged or moved by what they were seeing. It was a properly humbling experience,” recalls Simon. “The prisoners watched Jamie Carris’s story as though they were watching their own. If the Playhouse prison tour can capture that sense of immediacy and honesty then I think it could be startling.”

While the Royal Court audience may have enjoyed the play, Stephens could sense their distance. “That theatre is in the most expensive borough in the country. It was a play where they couldn’t recognise themselves, but when we took it to Wandsworth, the recognition was palpable,” he says.

“Prisoners can be a hard audience, like schools; if they’re bored, they’re unapologetic about walking out or talking to their mates…but with Country Music, they got the jokes more than theatre audiences did.

“I love the urgency and liveliness of a prison audience, where they’re not waiting to see someone else’s response. They’re very direct, whereas theatre audiences, in London especially, can be really cool and guarded, which is exactly the opposite of why you want to write a play.”

Simon was not tempted to update the play for its new staging. “It’s set between 1980 and 2004 and I think it would be a mistake to make it contemporary as it’s a piece of its moment – and the Leeds directors [Lisa Blair and Eleanor While} wanted to keep it as it was,” he says.

Since 2004, Country Music has been staged in Germany and had readings in New York and Australia, confirming its universality. “It seems to travel well,” says Simon. “Fundamentally, to me it’s not really a play about prison or prisoners but about a father who becomes estranged from his daughter, more than it’s about criminality.”

That theme struck a chord with the prisoners at Wandsworth, and Simon believes the benefit of theatre, writing courses and education in prison is considerable. “Grendon is the only therapeutic prison in the country for male prisoners. They do 20 hours a week of group therapy; I worked with lifers there and it was a very profound experience – a remarkable place to work and remarkable people to be with.

“There were guys serving 20 years and over time I got to know them not as prisoners, but as writers. Life in jail is about putting on personas, for your wife, the warder on your wing, the governor, and I think they enjoyed putting on the persona of being a writer,” he says.

“For me, part of the purpose of prison is the possibility of rehabilitation, and education is a way to improve things. Art and writing help, education helps, theatre helps…and I’m not speaking as a liberal but as a parent who wants to raise children where there’s less crime rather than more.”

One last question, Simon, why call the play Country Music? “I’m a big lover of country music, and my favourite type of country music is not the sentimental music that you find in Nashville but Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and The Carter Family, and the amount of songs that Hank wrote about men being parted from their family is legion,” he says.

“The play has a simple format, four scenes that last an hour and a quarter, as I wanted to create an impact in the same that a country song does. In some ways, the final scene is a refrain of the first, which is what country songs do too.”

Country Music runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from June 24 to 26, at 7.45pm nightly plus a 2.30pm Saturday matinee, and then tours Yorkshire prisons. Box office: 0113 213 7700.