Ridley began writing the play while still an art student at St Martin's School of Art. While there he created a number of performance art pieces consisting of long fast-paced monologues detailing dream sequences and characters with shifting identities, which usually Ridley would perform in art galleries. From writing these some of Ridley's friends, who were leaving art school to instead pursue acting, suggested that his monologues would make a good basis for a stage play. Ridley began writing "The Pitchfork Disney" based on two of his monologues that were companion pieces, one centring on a character who was afraid of everything and one who was afraid of nothing, with the play forming from the idea of what would happen if these two characters met.