IT'S only when you sit down on a gloriously sunny April morning, over looking the Thames estuary, while chatting to a very friendly journalist, that you eventually realise the hard work, experiences, as well as all the trials and tribulations in your life, have actually been leading up to this point.

Not the interview, obviously, but the success you so richly deserve.

That's what Sadie Hasler is basking in, although she's far too modest and self effacing to be basking at all. In fact she appears to be a little bit nervous about the whole getting published and getting signed to one of the UK's top agents.

"It means I can't muck about anymore," she smiles. "I've actually got to take this whole playwriting thing seriously. That's actually a bit scary."

I venture that she's done all the hard stuff, working in schools with problem children, grafting on the stand-up comedy circuit, writing an award-winning weekly newspaper column.

Now she can look forward to a national tour with her acclaimed new play Pramkicker and her theatre company Old Trunk, which she runs with friend and director Sarah Mayhew.

An unflinching look at what it means to be a modern woman, Pramkicker features both Sadie and Sarah playing Jude, who has always known she doesn’t want kids, and Susie, who isn’t sure if her ovaries are twinging or if she just needs a wee.

One day, in a café full of yummy mummies, Jude loses the plot. Then gets arrested. Then gets sent to anger management. Susie goes along for the ride and uses the opportunity to confess a secret.

Supported by Arts Council England, it's already been a huge hit in Edinburgh, the Latitude Festival and in London where it got rave reviews and a lot of interest from industry professionals.

"So I invited an agent to come along and see it in London," she smiles, "and then the guy from the publisher was there at the same performance. Afterwards they're both there and I'm thinking these two people are really important and I have to talk to them but I don't want to ignore either so I basically introduced them to each other and we all had a chat."

It's this contradiction of worldly wise savviness, and yet still unsure of her obvious talent, that makes Sadie so utterly adorable.

"I haven't really thought about how I got here," she says. "Sarah and I set up Old Trunk four years ago when I was a teacher working with kids who had been permanently excluded from school and while it was a really rewarding job I just knew I wanted to do something else.

"Sarah and I had done one play already, which went really well, and so one night Sarah just said 'I just want to do plays' and I said 'yeah, so do I'. We saw my dad's old boarding school trunk in the corner of my room and we thought about all these stories coming out of that trunk, and that's where it all started."

Sadie wrote Pramkicker last February, since which time it has gone on quite a journey. One that continues to get more exciting by the month. Because not only is Sadie signed to an agent on the back of it, the play is now published by Bloomsbury and it's about to start it's first nationwide tour. That starts at the Colchester Arts Centre, next week, and takes in Manchester, Brighton, Norwich, Oxford, a home town gig at the Clifftown Theatre in Southend, and then back at the King's Head Theatre in London.

"I properly cried when it got published," she admits. "It was such an amazing feeling and since then we've had an incredible response from all kinds of people. Students want to use speeches from it in their auditions and we even had a feminist dramaturg from Princeton University asking for the script so she could use it as an example of a modern female piece of text, which is just mindblowing."

Born in Hackney Sadie's family moved out of London when she was three.

"We got burgled," she says, "and mum didn't want to live there anymore so we moved to Leicester where we have family. Then we moved to Southend, my mum's from Billericay, and this is where I grew up and went to school and everything really, so I think of myself as a proper Southend girl."

Drama has always been an important part of Sadie's life, right from early on.

"I went to the Palace Theatre Drama Club then on to youth theatre," she adds. "I thought acting is what I wanted to do and then a teacher came over from Boston who was incredibly inspiring and really pushed my writing."

After writing poems and short stories, Sadie came up with the idea for her first play at the age of 16 and continued writing for the local youth theatres until she discovered comedy in her 20s.

Writing sketches with the likes of Al Murray and Harry Hill, as well as her own solo stuff, Sadie honed her writing as well as her performance skills on stage.

"As a stand-up you almost have to edit on the spot," she tells me. "There's no hiding away and it's totally ruthless but in terms of my playwriting it was a great experience just giving you a grasp of what lines work and what don't.

"Then there's the newspaper column, which has taught me loads about editing down what I want to say in just 600 words and writing for a particular audience.

"Even working with kids and writing for the youth theatres, you don't really think about all that stuff but I suppose yes all of that has contributed to where I am now and possibly how well Pramkicker is doing - I'm still nervous about it though, ok!"

She needn't be!

Pramkicker

Colchester Arts Centre,

Church Street, Colchester.

Wednesday, May 4. Doors 7.30pm, show 8pm.

Pay What You Can Nights. 01206 500900.

www.colchesterartscentre.com