IN July, Joseph Rowntree School drama teacher Maggie Smales and York Theatre Royal Young Actors Company regular Rebecca Beattie alternated performances in the principal role of Kathryn in Two Planks And A Passion.

From Wednesday, they play troubled daughter and imprisoned mother in the premiere of York playwright Hannah Davies’s Little Angels, as they swap the In The Round main-house stage for the intimacy of the Theatre Royal Studio.

“During the Two Planks run, we didn’t know we were going to be in this play together,” says Rebecca, whose association with Hannah’s play began when it was still a work in progress. “I did the original play-reading two years ago and then they asked me back for a second reading.”

She duly landed the role of Chloe, a 17-year-old single mum who lives with her aunt and new baby but is struggling to cope with her new life and the absence of her jailed mother, Jean.

Maggie came on board to play the mother right at the end of Two Planks. “Julian [Ollive], the director, contacted me and asked me if I was interested as I hadn’t done the official auditions,” she says. “I believe that Juliet Forster, the Two Planks co-director, put my name forward, which is very flattering.”

Davies’s first full-length play is a dark and poignant tale of a young girl going backwards in the need to go forwards. “Chloe is really, really struggling with emotions that should come naturally, like love and bonding,” says Rebecca.

“She’s suddenly had this child and because she’s doesn’t even know how to show her own child love, she’s scared that she will end up hurting her child, like her mother hurt her,” says Rebecca. “It’s not that she’s selfish, it’s more a fear of letting her child down, as she’s had no role model for how to be a mother.”

Rebecca, 23, is a mother herself. “I can draw on being a young mum because I do know how scary it can be, even coming, as I do, from a background with all the support and love you could wish for,” she says.

“I still think, “Oh my god, I hope I can do this child right and give him everything he needs”. If I’m thinking that, magnify it ten times for how a 17-year-old single mum, with a mother in prison, is feeling. Even in the best circumstances, you don’t realise how hard being a parent will be.”

Maggie, in turn, can bring her teaching experience to her role. “The mother has isolated herself through her own actions, but the hand she has been given is both victim and perpetrator because often victims end up perpetrators, as I know from “damaged” children I’ve taught,” she says.

“When they’ve come from such a terrible background, they can be so hard and resentful that they don’t present you with an opportunity to empathise with them.”

• York Theatre Royal Young Actors Company presents Little Angels, York Theatre Royal Studio, Wednesday to Saturday, 7.45pm and Saturday matinee at 2pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk