MOLLY Taylor is no stranger to ploughing every last ounce of energy into her work.

Last spring, the actress ran on a treadmill for 50 minutes for the duration of Oran Mor lunchtime play Born to Run.

And she wowed critics – and Scotland's traffic commissioner – with her autobiographical 2012 one-woman Edinburgh Fringe show, Love Letters to the Public Transport System, about her travels around the country.

Yet her new, semi-autobiographical play exploring the emotional rollercoaster of football fans demands just as much endurance given the city she's chosen for its debut.

The 31-year-old Glasgow University graduate said: "I thought it was going to be interesting placing a show that's about football fan culture and songs in a city like Glasgow with the delicacy of how the two major teams of this city have to operate and how their fans have to operate. They can't just stand up and sing whatever they want whenever they want.

"We do have that freedom. It will be interesting to see how a neutral audience responds."

Born and bred in Liverpool, the playwright is a passionate supporter of red side of the Merseyside divide.

She has sat in the stands of Anfield from the age of nine alongside her father, Rogan Taylor, an expert on football history and culture, who heads the Football Industry Group at the University of Liverpool.

And it's this relationship with football that she's revisiting in Sweet Silver Song of the Lark, directed by Catrin Evans, based on a nine-year-old girl looking at the point that she became a football fan.

"It's been informative in my life, my dad's obsession with football," said Molly, who grew up in a family of three daughters.

"You learn how the game is played from an early age, but you don't get to learn the set of rules as fans. All the songs I've ever learned as a football fan, no one sat me down and taught me them.

"I learned them through osmosis – they soak into your being. As a fan there's something magical about that transference, how you learn how to be a fan."

The voice of Molly's father is provided by Benny Young, with whom Molly starred alongside in Faith Fall, a drama by Frances Poet, staged in last season's A Play, A Pie And A Pint.

"He's a bit of a philosopher about football – he's a historian, he ruminates on the game," said Molly.

"He's her guide to football. He's the person who created that relationship."

The pair talk of their love of the beautiful game and its songs, which conjures up the image of The Lad, played by Michael Ryan.

Michael's character is the quintessential super-fan who invests every penny in follow-ing his team around Europe.

"It will be really interesting to see how it sits with a neutral audience of non-Liverpudlians, especially when Celtic and Liverpool share a major song," said Molly.

"Football provides people with everything that a life should have within 90 minutes.

"In that 90 minutes you can feel rage and joy and fear and triumph and suffering."

"It's an imagined piece rather than a literal one," she adds.

"There are moments that are set on the terraces, but there are also moments that are set in the living room watching the telly or in the pub before the game.

"It's not a straight piece of narrative, linear drama. It's a collage of moments that these fans share."

This is the first play for Oran Mor that Molly has written, having starred in two productions last year, with her performance in Gary McNair's play Born To Run winning plaudits for her stamina, as well as the emotional depths she plumbed while on a treadmill.

It's also the first time that her writing has been spoken by other actors. Her monologue, Love Letters to the Public Transport System, was a Fringe hit last year and elicited a letter of support from traffic commissioner Joan Aitken.

Molly, who lives in London, spent 10 years in Glasgow and gained a degree in English literature and theatre studies. She has just completed a project with Glasgow-based arts company Trigger, in which she produced a play for people who find it hard to leave their homes.

The project, Visit, took her into homes in Springburn and sheltered housing in Motherwell.

And she'd like to see her latest show get bigger. She added: "I really want to make a show with a choir of 50 Kop-ites, but I can't do that in Oran Mor."

n Sweet Silver Song of the Lark is at Oran Mor, Byres Road, until Saturday, doors open at noon (12.30pm today). Tickets £8–£12.50 on the door or at www.ticketweb.co.uk