GRAHAM Sanderson had taught at Fulford School for 30 years when he decided to stop in 2001 to do more writing and travel.

He had co-written two plays for performance at the York school but never an adult play until the Six By Six Project for new plays caught his eye last year.

"I often think you need structures and deadlines as a writer so something like this project is very welcome, because otherwise who are you writing for? Without this, plays might just end up on a few desks," says Graham, of Scarcroft Road, York.

His play, The Fall Of Man, will be staged next week by the York Settlement Players at Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York.

"The subject arose from one condition of entry, which said the play had to be set in York in the past 50 years. I was kind of into the Mystery Plays, having done the educational pack for the Millennium Mystery Plays and Mystery Plays on wagons last year, so I thought 'Why not set the play around rehearsals for a Mystery Play production?'," recalls Graham.

The Fall Of Man, the story of Adam and Eve, struck him as the ideal choice. "I then thought 'Why not have the characters go through the same challenges and temptations in their own lives as they do in the play'," says Graham.

With the author's permission, he based his play on Mike Poulton's version of the Mystery Plays text for the 2000 production. In Sanderson's drama, sexual tension between certain characters provides intrigue as the plot twists like Satan's tail, and the cast's relationships are affected by Adam, a character more like Lucifer than the Adam of the Bible.

"I wrote notes to myself that the tricky bit would be to weave the themes of the original play - temptation and the quest for knowledge - into what was happening to the cast, and I decided that the best modern equivalent was a quest for self knowledge," says Graham. "In the case of Alan, who is playing Lucifer, he's on a quest to confront his own sexuality."

The players experience diverse temptations as they rehearse, and with curtain-up approaching, their self knowledge begins to control events in a way that is both funny and sad. "On their quest, they're not necessarily going to find the answers they expect to find," says Graham.

Graham has undergone his own quest, completing his first adult play at the age of 55 under the Six By Six project initiative launched in May 2002 by Colin Jackson, drama consultant at City of York Council.

The play should have been a one-act drama lasting no more than an hour; instead, says Graham, "it was clear from early on that I wasn't going to meet that stipulation and it would have to be a two-act, 90-minute play". Thankfully the Settlement Players were happy to go ahead with other Six By Six productions earlier this year while postponing Graham's play until it could be accommodated this autumn.

Now he is writing a new work. "I'm in the writers' group at York Theatre Royal, and we're each writing a three-hander that's supposed to be 30 minutes long, but I fear it's shaping up to be longer than that," he says.

In the meantime, directed by Settlement Players stalwart Simon Tompsett, The Fall Of Man runs from October 22 to 25 at the Friargate Theatre. Performances are at 7.30pm, plus a 2.30pm Saturday matinee; tickets cost £5, concessions and matinee £4, on 0845 961 3000.

Updated: 09:04 Friday, October 17, 2003