A play about the impact on women’s lives of the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper is to reopen Leeds Playhouse, after its 15-month, £16m redevelopment. There Are No Beginnings, written by local playwright Charley Miles, will be staged in October in a new studio space at the theatre, which last year reverted to its original name after a 28-year spell as West Yorkshire Playhouse.

As research, Miles, 28, interviewed women – including her own mother – who lived in the region when the serial killer Peter Sutcliffe was at large in the late 1970s and early 80s. “Across the north and across the whole country,” says Miles, women’s lives “were completely transformed over this five-year period by one man”. Sutcliffe is serving 20 life sentences for murdering 13 women and attempting to kill another seven. He was caught after one of Britain’s biggest ever criminal manhunts.

Miles chose not to include any speaking roles for male characters in the play. It was partly written, she said, out of frustration that the hunt for the Ripper was frequently framed as a “battle of the titans” between Sutcliffe and detective George Oldfield, who led the inquiry. Her interviewees spoke of the fear and anger of the era but also of the solidarity they felt with other women. “I think it’s really impressive how women can band together and triumph in terrible situations,” said Miles.

Her play follows four women, including two on the police force. One is based on Elaine Benson, a new recruit who became a detective on the case. Another character was inspired by Jalna Hanmer, a pioneer of women’s studies courses at Bradford University. The play is prefaced by a quotation from Hanmer’s book Well-Founded Fear: “During the five years that the so-called Ripper roamed the north, the consciousness of women began to be transformed. Women began to call on women to depend on each other, and not men.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An artist’s impression of the new Leeds Playhouse

Punctuated by radio news bulletins, the play shows how the case invaded the lives of ordinary people. “It changed how women raised their children,” said Miles. “Nobody had bothered locking their doors, nobody checked on their daughters when they were out playing on the streets all day. By 1982 it was an entirely different world. That happened because of one man and it pisses me off that the man got all the air time.” Her play interrogates the sexism of the era – in the police, the media and society in general. One character asks why women, rather than men, should be expected to observe an evening curfew caused by the Ripper.

Miles was keen to acknowledge pioneers such as Hanmer, and the era’s feminist accomplishments. “I want people to feel proud. The ‘reclaim the night’ movement was born in Leeds in the 1970s. Bradford had one of the first women’s studies courses in the whole of the UK.”

Miles grew up in the village of Kilburn, near Thirsk in North Yorkshire. Her mother told her that even in Thirsk, a small market town some distance from Sutcliffe’s attacks, she “didn’t go out after dark” because of him. “The message was: don’t be out. And if you are out and something happens to you, it’s your fault.”

Miles studied English and creative writing at Warwick University and worked as a script reader at West Yorkshire Playhouse, where her play Blackthorn – an autobiographical two-hander about growing up in rural Yorkshire – was staged in 2016. It was produced at the Edinburgh fringe in 2018 and then had a rural tour including a performance at the pub in her home village.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harry Egan and Charlotte Bate in Miles’s 2016 play, Blackthorn. Photograph: Anthony Robling

There Are No Beginnings was written during Miles’s tenure as the Channel 4 writer in residence at Leeds Playhouse. A TV adaptation is already being developed. Miles is wary of the prevalence of violence against women on television. “Audiences have become so used to it being the fodder for excitement. Writing this play was my response against that. I’m not going to put a female corpse on telly or on stage. We have to start making that not normal again for audiences.”

Artistic director James Brining said: “As a local writer, Charley Miles found a home here. And by telling a story set during one of the darkest periods in our city’s history, we’re making a powerful statement about female resilience and solidarity. I’m so excited to see this new Leeds play, so deeply rooted in the narrative of the city, in our brand new theatre.”

Directed by Amy Leach, the play runs from 11 October to 2 November and will be produced in the Playhouse’s new studio space, the Bramall Rock Void, in the foundations of the building.

This summer, Miles is taking another play to the Edinburgh festival, Daughterhood, which is about two sisters, one of whom is a carer for her father. Paines Plough’s production will be at the Roundabout stage at the Summerhall venue and then touring.

Leeds Playhouse’s new season includes an adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette, Lung theatre company’s political play Trojan Horse and a visit by Lemn Sissay. An opening weekend event will invite audiences to go backstage and explore the new building – which now has a city-facing entrance, improved disabled access and more ladies’ toilets.