The Oamaru Repertory Society launches its season of Dunedin playwright Tim Hambleton's Holding Court next month.
Mr Hambleton (43) said Oamaru was a town that could identify with some of the struggles highlighted in his story.
Holding Court is about the Government's plan to shut down a small district court, and a local judge and lawyers' attempts to prevent that.
In real life, the Waitaki District Council is due to take possession of the mothballed historic Oamaru Courthouse.
It was closed because of earthquake-strengthening concerns in November 2011, but will be revived as a courthouse, possibly within a year.
Mr Hambleton said his play was based on people he had met, not necessarily Oamaru's real-life court troubles.
"It touches on the bureaucracy to be found in many government agencies, including the Ministry of Justice.
"The judge, for example, is a hybrid of some of the judges I've prosecuted in front of over the last 15 to 20 years. And the lawyers are also loosely based on some lawyers I've encountered.''
Mr Hambleton has written plays since about 1995.
He said theatre allowed him to explore his profession in a safe and readily accessible world that had a lot of scope for humour in an otherwise serious place like court.
"A lot of my plays are comedies. Many of them are legal-themed, simply because of my background and the maxim about you write what you know.
"As a kid, I use to love Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. I've definitely been influenced by the writing of those television shows, so I like to have characters who are jumped-up bureaucrats.
"I really only want the play to entertain. For me, aside from time with my family, there's no better feeling than hearing the audience laugh at lines or a scenario I've created.''
He has written five large plays, and in the last couple of years has taken part in producing 10-minute plays.
Last year, he was named runner-up in the final of the Playwrights' Association of New Zealand inaugural 10-Minute Play Festival for his play The Reunion.
Mr Hambleton moved around New Zealand a lot as a child.
Both of his parents were teachers so he spent time in places as far afield as Hamilton and the Micronesian nation of Nauru, but he identified as being from Dunedin.
He studied law at the University of Otago, and worked as a lawyer at a practice in Alexandra before taking up a role as a prosecutor for the police in Invercargill in 1997.
"Because I was working in a small town, you had to be a general practitioner. I had to know about most law, but I was interested in criminal law. It's why I applied for the police job.''
Mr Hambleton said his professional career was varied.
It was hard to point to individual cases he worked on as highlights because there were so many, but what he enjoyed the most about his career as a police prosecutor was the travel.
He moved around the country and was exposed to different courts and enjoyed learning how each operated.
His next project is another 10-minute play for Pint Sized Plays.
It is about a psychiatric patient who has escaped hospital and is pretending to be an Indian surgeon.
Mr Hambleton lives in Dunedin with his wife and two children.
