YORK playwright Mike Kenny is as prolific as ever, even if the bewildering hiatus since his last York Theatre Royal play now runs into a fourth year.

Already The Press has thrown the spotlight on his new work for Rochdale's M6 Theatre Company, A Tiger's Tale, the story of a West Riding circus family bringing home a Sumatran tiger from South Africa to live with them in Holmfirth as a family pet that they would walk on a lead past the primary school.

"I'm doing a play for a company in India, The Vulture Song, which Blah Blah Blah are going to do here too," says Mike, whose past York work includes The Railway Children at the National Railway Museum and the 2012 York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens. "In India, it's in rehearsal in Delhi, where a company called Yellowcat are working on it to stage it all over India.

"I'm also doing a play in France, Like Water For Goldfish, which I'm halfway through writing for the Compagnie de Louise, who are based in Paris and La Rochelle, which will be produced at the beginning of next year.

"The starting point for that was that the director of the company is a friend of mine who I've worked with before. She was getting fed up with how stories for boys are always seen as universal, whereas stories for girls are seen as just being for girls, and she wanted to do something about that, and just make it all about telling a good story."

Mike has done many an adaptation but is enjoying the chance to write original works, such as A Tiger's Tale and his Indian and French commissions. "Not that I'd ever turn my nose up at doing adaptations, as that's my bread and butter, but I'm always banging on about the need for original stories for children's theatre," he says.