Short story writer Margaret Wilkinson tells Entertainments Writer STEVE PRATT about how she came to pen a grotesque cabaret for the stage

SHE was the original bad girl - known as every man's desire, and women's too.

Lulu was the temptress who destroyed everyone she came into contact with, eventually turning to prostitution and death at the hands of Jack the Ripper.

Now the ultimate femme fatale is receiving a makeover in a Newcastle stage production with a little help from writer Margaret Wilkinson, a New Yorkwriter and teacher who left her native America two decades ago.

Lulu first surfaced in two Franz Wedekind plays, Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box, but was most memorably impersonated by actress Louise Brooks in the 1920s film Pandora's Box.

Wilkinson is the writer of a production being staged by Newcastle's Northern Stage Ensemble and Cornwall's Kneehigh Theatre. Her role is not, by her own admission, easy to define as it's essentially a devised piece, conceived and created by Emma Rice (who also plays Lulu), and Neil Murray.

"It's difficult to see where the writer fits in, but that's a good reason for doing it," says Wilkinson, who is prose tutor on the MA in creative writing at Northumbria University.

She first worked with Murray last year on The Tiger's Bride at the Gulbenkian Theatre, Newcastle, when she adapted, with original writing, an Angela Carter short story. Her script was recorded and played as a soundtrack over the actions of the actors on stage and film-projected on the back wall.

"Neil took a risk because I've been a prose writer and writing mostly short stories. They are terrifically difficult to get published and I was feeling frustrated about that when I met him," she recalls.

Because The Tiger's Bride was recorded, it remained and existed alongside the other elements of the production. With a devised production, like Pandora's Box, it's a case of everything being mixed together.

"I was involved from the very beginning. I had lots of discussions with Emma and Neil, and then wrote a script. It's a whole new take, it's not an adaptation. Then the script changed in rehearsals," she says.

"What I knew of the original was the film and Louise Brooks's Lulu, which is maybe the same as most people. The mystery at the heart of the story is that, no matter how hard people have tried, no one can explain or understand Lulu, except that she's a bad girl. The idea was to explore her character while not really understanding her and keeping that mystery about her."

The production is played out on a vast installation of debris and destruction, comprising 20 tonnes of specially-created rubble covering the entire stage. A massive gauze forms the backdrop for pre-recorded video projection.

Led by a ringmaster, a group of battered performers emerged from these remains of a burnt-out theatre to tell the story of Lulu and her lovers. The grotesque cabaret features cancaning ghosts, a singing corpse and a foul-mouthed compere.

Where the writer fits into this mix of live and recorded music, dance and video projection is difficult to fathom, Wilkinson admits, but says: "I feel visual theatre is a way forward for writers. With rehearsals, the battlelines are not drawn as they are in traditional plays. It's been very exciting watching physical theatre being devised. It's lovely for the writer because you can always find a good way if they're not moving with the words and seem a bit self-conscious. Words can affect the intimacy and pace of the piece.

"Hopefully, it will all work together. I'm not only interested for myself but the students I teach. There's an interesting view here for writers and this is a much more ambitious production than The Tiger's Bride."

She's already had her first novel, Ocean Avenue, published along with a collection of her stories, 1956. Now she's been commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to dramatise a selection of those stories to be broadcast this summer. A film script is another possibility.

She's also working on a play of her own. "I'm trying to see lots of theatre. It's a steep learning curve," she says. "While I've been writing for years, I don't necessarily understand how to write a play script. It's not that easy a transition."

Pandora's Box is at Newcastle Playhouse until April 6 (tickets 0191 230 5151) and West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from April 23-27 (tickets 0113 213 7700)