THE York Theatre Royal Young Actors Company revolves around providing blossoming talent with opportunities.

This may not apply directly to Hull’s rapidly rising playwright of the moment, Tom Wells, but nevertheless YAC director Julian Ollive is the first to bring his fizzing comedy dramas to the attention of York audiences as part of the Theatre Royal’s Yorkshire Season.

Ollive’s staging of Wells’s dark comedy about knitting, penguins and Battenburg cake, Me, As A Penguin, and the show’s accompanying Wells monologue, Spacewang, does provide first opportunities for York actress Keri Bastiman and burgeoning director Oliver O’Shea.

“I’ve just finished my Masters at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts at Wandsworth and moved back north to York in December,” says Keri, 24. “I found out about this show on Facebook and then contacted Julian.

“I liked the fact that because I hadn’t done any stage stuff since November and had been doing student films, it was good to get a theatre role to take me through my paces again.

“I did my degree in musical theatre but ultimately I’d prefer to do straight theatre. I get too nervous when I’m singing.”

In Me, As A Penguin, Keri plays the heavily pregnant Liz, whose home with shabby, sofa-loving partner Mark is invaded by her brother Stitch as he prepares to dip his toe into Hull’s gay scene.

“It’s my first Tom Wells show and as I read it, I just thought it was brilliant,” Keri says. “I love how it has the comedy in there but also has this deep, caring side to it. It’s not just a load of giggles that you don’t care about afterwards.”

If Me, As A Penguin seeks to “express the aspirations and concerns of young adults in today’s society”, Wells’s Spacewang is a comic and poignant 20-minute monologue of intergalactic proportions in which schoolgirl Nora bunks off school to put her big plan into action by the sea. Today she will make contact with alien life forms.

“Spacewang was my introduction to Tom Wells,” says director Oliver O’Shea. “I then read other plays by Tom and he has an instantly recognisable voice, which is what you want in a writer. There’s a real depth to him, writing about things that matter to 21st century writers and I certainly imagine he will be the next Alan Ayckbourn or Alan Bennett of Yorkshire theatre.”

For Oliver, this season’s opportunity to direct at the Theatre Royal is the next rung on the theatre ladder, having performed in the theatre’s youth theatre company before studying English at Robinson College, Cambridge.

“I finished at Cambridge last year and I absolutely have the ambition to be a theatre director in the long term, but it’s difficult to get much work, so I work in the Theatre Royal box office part-time and have assisted Julian on a few shows here, such as Equus and Little Angels,” he says.

“I’m very grateful now to have the support and the resources to be able to put on Spacewang.”

• York Theatre Royal Young Actors Company presents Me, As A Penguin and Spacewang York Theatre Royal Studio, tonight until Saturday, 7.45pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk