Bola Agbaje is defiant. ‘People say to me: “Why should we see another story about a black guy on an estate?”

They say: “We’ve seen it all already.” Well, I don’t think you have,’ she says. ‘I think there are loads of people out there who’d say: “No one’s told my story yet.” I want to write about the lives I think we should talk about.’

Just like her Olivier Award-winning debut, Gone Too Far!, Agbaje’s new Royal Court play is indeed set on an estate and, yes, it features black characters, drugs, gangs and gun crime.

But it also takes in dreams, aspirations and people trying to live a good life as best they can.

Ashley Walters plays David, just out of prison, who persuades his mate Kojo, struggling with debts and the threat of unemployment, to make a bit of dodgy money on the side.

Against an urban backdrop blighted by recession, poverty and limited horizons, the play confronts head-on issues of responsibility, choice and the freedom people have to control their own lives.

‘People might assume David is a negative character whose story we don’t want to hear,’ says Agbaje, ‘but just because someone has made bad choices doesn’t mean they are all bad.’

Now 28, Agbaje is one of the fearless new star playwrights to have emerged from the Royal Court under Dominic Cooke.

She grew up on the North Peckham estate in south London dreaming of becoming an actress and only wrote Gone Too Far! – in which two boys pop out for a pint of milk and encounter on their doorstep a divided world – because she was sick of not finding any roles she could play herself.

‘I thought I should stop complaining and create opportunities,’ she says. ‘It turned out I wasn’t much of an actress.

Instead I write plays because I want people to relate to them and think: “Wow, theatre is for me.”’

Meeting Agbaje is a bit like coming face to face with a tornado. She’s a whirligig of positive thinking, pragmatism and frank-talking.

She currently manages 600 tenants on a Beckton estate, a source of terrific ‘stories’ which has also informed her highly opinionated world view on the problems facing those she writes about.

She thinks housing benefit doesn’t work (‘it sets people up to fail’) and that the English ‘us and them’ culture puts people in boxes they can’t climb out of.

She also rails against an endemic attitude of blame – from Parliament to the poorest estates – in which everything is always someone else’s fault, attacks the recent credit boom that encouraged everyone to buy plasma TVs for ‘free’, and hates our celebrity fixation that has reduced ambition to wanting instant fame.

Agbaje credits her Nigerian parents for her forthright outlook. ‘They’ve always supported me,’ she says.

‘People are sometimes condescending when I say I grew up on an estate, but you know what? It wasn’t that bad.’

She’s determined to become a full-time writer once she’s paid off her student loan.

‘I don’t have a social life,’ she says. ‘I write every evening after work.’ She’s currently under commission from Paines Plough and is turning Gone Too Far! into a film.

You suspect she’d also make a damn fine politician. ‘Most politicians don’t understand estate problems.

Instead they bracket them under tower blocks or single-parent backgrounds,’ she argues. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

For Agbaje, the core issue – evident in Off The Endz – is identity. ‘So many people I know don’t know who they are or what they want to achieve,’ she says.

‘Partly it really is a lack of role models. The reason why so many kids on estates look up to drug dealers or rappers is because drug dealers and rappers often come from the same place as them.

‘And partly it’s because people don’t take advantage of the opportunities offered to them.’

Blimey. Agbaje sounds almost frightening. ‘Drugs and crime affect us all,’ she says. ‘I see it every day and the kids are getting younger and younger.

But we’re not gonna solve it by brushing it under the carpet. Actually, I’m a dreamer. I honestly think we’re all gonna live in a better world eventually.’

So what would she say to the young people who live on her estate? ‘Get yourself to the Royal Court. Just because this play is happening in Sloane Square doesn’t mean it’s not for you.’