While classic works of Shakespeare remain vital to today’s theatre scene, I was excited at the prospect of seeing previously unperformed, cutting edge plays.

We’d gone along to the launch night of Write Now 3 festival at Brockley Jack Studio Theatre which celebrates the best new local playwrights.

Three talented authors had been picked from nearly 100 entrants to have their work professional acted out and each winning story sounded incredibly contemporary in its own very different way.

On Wednesday evening the festival kicked off with extracts from Jessica Brown’s poignant play Skinhead and Carol Vine’s gritty Borderland.

Despite being short exerts, the amazing quality, intelligence and developed characters were obviously the creation of wonderfully gifted writers and each actor was convincing in their challenging roles.

Set in the near future, Borderland invites us into the world of Darren – an old and sickly, ex-soldier living in an abandoned block of council flats.

This seemingly sad, dark story had me gripped and desperate to find out what happens next.

The evening concluded with the full showing of Melissa Bubnic’s Emoticon – a darkly comic play about four very different teenagers.

This outstanding author, who shadow writes for Channel 4’s Shameless, gives us a powerful insight into the world of today’s angst-ridden and internet-driven youngsters.

The electronic world of social media is brought to stark reality in her gritty drama as we watched Gimp Girl, a teenager suffering with a disfiguring disability, dealing with perverts online.

Tiani, the hot black girl, told us all about her “super lash curved brush mascara three times volume maximisation with specially formulated hydrogels. That’s right – hydrogels.”

With countless ‘OMGs’ and ‘LOLs’ thrown in among Twitter and Facebook mentions, we watched her fight off unwanted advances from her paedophile teacher.

But perhaps the most shocking, brutal scene set to Florence and the Machine’s Shake it Off portrayed a slow-motion, vicious homophobic group attack on one boy.

As one character struggled with coming out and joined in the horrific gay-bashing, the haunting scene captured the terrifying ignorance and violent culture some teens find themselves swept up in.

Watching Melissa’s powerful work premier was truly an experience I think everyone in the intimate venue felt lucky to have seen.

The Jack is firmly on the forefront of new writing in the area – I urge you not to miss the special opportunity to see these eye-opening dramas.

Emoticon runs until Saturday April 14.

Skinhead runs from Tuesday April 17 until Saturday April 21 and Borderland is being shown between Tuesday April 24 and Saturday April 28.

For the festival’s full programme and tickets visit brockleyjack.co.uk