The campus novel is an established tradition, but two Gúna Nua writers are bringing the goings-on of college life to the stage - with the help of an insider, writes Sara Keating

The anxieties of academic life have been well-mined for their literary worth throughout the 20th century. The university campus has provided writers as diverse as Kingsley Amis, Zadie Smith, and EM Forster with a ready-made microcosm from which to begin exploring important social issues such as class, gender and morality, as well as self-conscious artistic issues, such as the tension between scholarship and creativity, and the politics of the ownership of ideas.

While there is no similar "campus" tradition in the theatre, academics have regularly appeared as characters throughout 20th-century drama as a focus for exploring various moral and ethical dilemmas.

Almost uniformly, they're a despicable bunch. A collection of plagiarisers, philanderers, liars, and drunks, it is never quite clear whether the academics are corrupting the system or whether it's the system that is corrupting the individual scholar.

Thesis, which premieres at the Civic Theatre Tallaght this week, explores the potential perversities of academic life in a fast-paced televisual narrative that never quite lets the audience make up its mind about exactly who's responsible for the dramatic turn of events.

Written by Gerry Dukes, a Joyce and Beckett expert who lectures at the University of Limerick, with Paul Meade and David Parnell of Gúna Nua Theatre Company, Thesis is a traditional story of love and betrayal set in the academic context of an unnamed Irish university.

However, it also provides a microcosmic view of the contemporary international political climate, touching on issues of censorship, ethnic conflict and religious fundamentalism.

The play opens as its central character, Stephen, is leaving for the US to take up a research position at a university and finish his thesis on the work of James Joyce.

Through a series of simultaneous scenes, flashbacks and fantasies, it is revealed that Stephen has been having an affair with his professor's wife, that this professor has been stealing Stephen's ideas, and that his research project is not viable in the current political climate of the United States.

An inventive expressionistic dramatic structure is integrated with technological tricks that set up different levels of reality in the play, and as Stephen's jet-lagged mind begins to falter, he finds that his livelihood, his love and his research work are all under threat in the cut-throat academic world in which he has chosen to make his life.

The play's three authors have been working together closely on the project over the past two years, and it's inevitable that they are able to finish each other's sentences as they begin describing the genesis of the play.

Parnell, who is also directing the play, begins. "Paul and I had this mad notion of doing a play about something else entirely, and we identified Gerry as the best person to talk to about it, so we met up."

Meade remembers "sitting down with Gerry, and he began telling story after story after story about academic life", a life that Dukes describes as "terribly boring; it's an isolated life dedicated to scholarship, but sometimes odd things happen and it connects with the real world, and that's what the play is about."

The collaborative process has been exciting for them all. For Dukes it was "a release from teaching and research. Being an academic means that you're very self-absorbed, so being involved in a process with five people on stage and a whole crew off stage has been fantastic."

Meade says that the isolation of academia is precisely why the story in Thesis took shape as a kind of fluid, dreamlike narrative, because "while an academic career might seem really dry and boring, a lot of time is spent on your own, and it gives space for fantasy and for unusual things to happen."

Meade and Parnell, meanwhile, are used to working closely with each other, having collaborated on four original pieces - including the much-celebrated Scenes From a Watercooler and Skin Deep - for their theatre company Gúna Nua. Collaboration works particularly well for them when they just begin with the bare bones of an idea, like they did with Thesis.

Parnell insists that "there is a lot to be said for working like that, it allows ideas to go in all sorts of directions, it allows for things to be created in different ways. Someone might say something that triggers something off in someone else that no one had thought of. It's a very exciting way to work, because you don't necessarily know what you're going to end up with."

This was particularly true with Thesis, Parnell continues. "It went through so many versions. At one stage we had a lot of biographical detail about Joyce coming in and out in an early draft, and that was quite fun, but then we decided that we should really focus on the narrative, and the story that we wanted to tell. There were about twice as many characters too."

Meade admits that he and David initially began with "grand theatrical visions. It was huge. There was a cast of 100 in our heads."

In the final draft, however, their grand ambitions have been filtered down to accommodate a cast of five, with David Heap, Adam Fergus and Karen Ardiff playing the three central roles, and Emma Colohan and Anthony Brophy playing everybody else.

Dukes was philosophical about the necessary process of editing the script, which they did together: "There were 18 scenes at one stage, which is absolutely outrageous, but this is the way that things get done. You start off with an idea, it gets twisted and deformed and reshaped and revised and narrowed down until it becomes viable."

A happy ending to Stephen's quest for academic and romantic success, however, is not quite as viable. With his research project threatened by the geopolitical climate, Stephen ends up fighting for both his life's work and his love's commitment.

A series of bar-room brawls and surreal plane journeys complicate matters further, and as the relationship between Stephen and his professor suffers some more unexpected turbulence, there's no way of knowing which way the power will shift when the rivals find themselves back on home ground.

At the time of interview, Parnell admits nonchalantly that "the end isn't quite finalised. It is written, but we're still creating it artistically."

Dukes, having just seen his first full rehearsal of the play, is particularly excited about seeing Stephen's fate unfold on stage: "It's an amazing end and it's surprising. We're either going to get mauled for it or people are going to think 'that was a really good idea.' "

Thesis opens tomorrow at the Civic Theatre Tallaght, and runs until Apr 22; then at Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, Apr 24-29