The play that changed my life: how a pratfall in a student fringe farce made James Graham a playwright

‘Impeccably crafted’ … A 2003 production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist at London’s Donmar Warehouse, starring Cornelius Booth, Rhys Ifans, Paul Ritter and Adrian Scarborough. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

It was 1999. I was doing A-levels in Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, the former mining community I depict in my TV series Sherwood. My comprehensive school was one of the biggest in the country, one of a very small number with a working theatre. I wouldn’t be doing what I get to do now without that massive bit of luck.

I started doing loads of acting, and the department decided to do the first A-level drama they’d ever done because there were about a dozen of us who wanted to keep going after GCSEs.