It was Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton watching a live transmission of Osama Bin Laden’s execution by US special forces that inspired former war correspondent Neil Fleming to pen a revenge tragedy for the 21st century.

“It made me think revenge is alive and well in the modern world,” says Fleming, who is planning to investigate two strands in his update of the Elizabethan stage staple.

“One is the idea of state-sponsored revenge – the business of governments taking it upon themselves to exact revenge on their enemies. In the US, Moscow and Tel Aviv leaders decide to simply assassinate their enemies rather than go through any legal process.

“And revenge has been creeping back into the judicial process in the UK and US, masquerading as putting the victim at heart of the legal process. I suspect this is just code for revenge.

“There are calls for laws that allow the victim to participate in the business of punishment, which takes us back into the Elizabethan world where personal revenge took precedence over a justice system.”

Fleming is chief writer and general manager for Brighton-based Hydrocracker. He has spent the past year-and-a-half sifting through ideas and stories. With Wild Justice he wants to get further viewpoints on revenge from an audience.

“We didn’t want to do a boring Any Questions/talking heads thing,” he says. “Since we are a theatre company we thought it would be good to perform some things and get people’s reactions.

The intention is to be part of an ongoing process of research.”

The performances have been selected from a series of ideas Fleming put forward to the company – as he puts it “scenes from a play that doesn’t exist” – designed to provoke a reaction and fuel debate.

Joining the actors will be a panel including psychologist Dr Mark Devenny from the Centre For Applied Politics, Philosophy And Ethics; founder of The Forgiveness Project Maria Cantacuzio, which uses real stories of victims and perpetrators to explore concepts of forgiveness; and Jo Berry, who founded Building Bridges For Peace after her father died in the bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel.

Recent events in Iran have shown feelings of revenge don’t necessarily encompass everyone.

As reported in newspapers across the world last month, a convicted murderer named Balal was saved from a public hanging by the mother of his victim, who slapped him around the face and removed the noose from around his neck.

“It does seem to be unbelievable,” says Fleming. “If you look at the website of The Forgiveness Project there are a whole bunch of stories about people who have chosen the forgiveness path. It’s not easy to do.”

Fleming admits the idea of taking revenge on anyone fills him with horror.

“I worked in East and West Africa and covered a lot of wars in my early 30s,” he says.

“I had direct experience of what revenge looks like in places such as Liberia and Somalia.

“It’s extraordinary how, when you put someone in the right circumstances, they seem able to become violent. It’s a cliché, but the Second World War concentration camp guards all turned out to be perfectly normal people.

“It’s part of what is driving me to do this – I’m interested in how thin the layer of civilisation is, and how easy it is to rip it off.”

His research has seen him investigate revenge in popular media – finding cinematic concepts of revenge are often more about vengeance “using revenge as an excuse to shoot a lot of people”.

And he has spoken to parole officers who have revealed an uncomfortable truth about how people they have worked with regard revenge.

“Revenge is like being in love, only the other way around,” he says. “With love you’re infatuated with someone and feel you can’t be complete unless you have that person you want. With revenge you seem to get into a state where you feel you can’t be complete until you have destroyed the object of revenge. It’s an interesting mirror image.”

He also feels revenge as a concept is unique to humans.

“There’s lots of retaliation in the natural world,” he says. “But retaliation and revenge are not the same thing. Revenge is a combination of anger and cold calculation. It’s a dish served cold, with people going to astonishing lengths to play out what they are going to do.”

To illustrate his modern take on the 16th-century revenge tragedy, Hydrocracker have used a shocking image of a firebombed car.

“To do something like that involves a lot of detailed technical planning,” he says. “It’s extremely cold-blooded and nasty, hence it was the image to symbolise what revenge can be and the violence that lies beneath. I didn’t want to use some 16th-century image.”

Following the event, the next stage will be for Fleming to flesh out his story and for the piece to go into a June workshop with Brighton-based director Jo McInnes, fresh from directing new play strand Midummer Mischief at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s temporary Other Place studio theatre.

“The goal is not to be didactic about anything,” says Fleming. “It’s more to raise interest and engage people. I don’t want to write a play where people think ‘That’s entertaining’ and go home – I want to pull people more deeply into the subject matter.”