Characters take life in Ripping by Lexx Productions at Belconnen Theatre in Canberra

Dale Stam enjoyed slasher movies such as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer when he was growing up. But one of the common criticisms of such films was that the characters were thin: viewers didn't care about them and were just waiting for the next kill.

Stam says, "I had an idea – what if you took the slasher-movie type thing and spent time with the characters and got people emotionally involved?"

The result was his first produced play, Ripping, which opens at Belconnen Theatre on December 15. The title is a pun, alluding both to Jack the Ripper and to the propensity of Australians for making fun of their friends.

Ripping is set at a university pub during a meeting of Roaring Rippers, a Jack the Ripper theory club, at a time when female students have been disappearing, making the campus uneasy.

Literature student Stanley (played by Cole Hilder) is the leader of the group and media student Ed (John Robert Lombard) is its punching bag. Education student Ripley (James Walddron) is one of the more laid-back and mature members, and sociology student Stephanie is bored and brash. Then there's Charlotte (Annie Roberts), a student journalist who's entered the group undercover in search of a story since the disappearances have begun.

"She's making a logic jump there," Stam says. But the subject of the campus disappearances keeps resurfacing between discussion of Ripper theories – new fears competing with old horrors – and then something happens that puts the campus into lockdown, forcing everyone to stay put. And then things begin to get much, much worse.

Stam, who is also an actor, began writing his play a couple of years ago while rehearsing the musical Annie Get Your Gun. It's changed quite a lot in that time.

"Initially I was going to write a three-person play in regards to Lewis Carroll being Jack the Ripper," he says.

"I was reading up on the suspects – he's probably the most unlikely one."

Some have speculated the author of books such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was the notorious London serial killer because of anagrams formed out of his poems, which Stam sees as a stretch – "you can pretty much make them whatever you want".

He was able to get one act out of that material but wanted a full two-act play so decided to take a different approach. He was able to find a producer willing to put the play on stage and thought that as he was a first-time writer, a similarly fresh first-time director would be good to have on board. He didn't want to direct it himself.

"I knew my version of it, I've seen it, I wrote it. What interested me was someone taking my work and putting their own interpretation on it."